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Rebels strike near Chechnya, 48 dead
Suspected Chechen rebels rampaged through a southern Russian region in attacks early on Tuesday that killed 48 people and raised new doubts about Moscow's ability to stamp out Chechnya's separatist violence.
In a brazen operation, the rebels seized the interior ministry building in Ingushetia region and held it for several hours, raided police arms depots and reduced police headquarters and a building housing border guards to gutted wrecks.
The large-scale offensive was the biggest armed operation by rebels in Ingushetia since war between separatists and Moscow erupted in neighboring Chechnya a decade ago.
The coordinated strikes, concentrated in the regional capital Nazran, led to fierce overnight battles involving grenade-launchers and automatic weapons as security forces fought to dislodge the rebels from the ministry building.
Coming just six weeks after the assassination of Chechen leader Akhmad Kadyrov, the daring operation dealt a further blow to President Vladimir Putin's assertion that the tide had turned in Moscow's favor in its nine-year battle with the separatists.
There was no immediate word from the Kremlin. Itar-Tass news agency said Ingushi President Murat Zyazikov kept Putin informed on the situation by telephone.
Tass quoted police as saying a small army of up to 200 guerrilla fighters staged the operation that began with rebels tricking their way into checkpoints on one of the main highways.
Using false documents that identified them as members of anti-crime and special service squads, they commandeered the checkpoints and then gunned down police who turned out to answer the alarm, police said, quoted by Tass.
Forty-eight people -- 18 police, five regional justice officials and 25 civilians -- were killed, Yakhya Khadziyev, a spokesman for the regional interior ministry, was quoted as saying by Tass.
He said the dead included the acting regional interior minister Abukar Kostoyev, who had been in the building when it was captured. Another 60 people were injured. Two rebel fighters had been killed.
Footage shown by ORT Channel One television showed bodies of combatants and civilians lying in the streets Tuesday, many of them charred and mutilated from the intense fighting.
Witnesses said they had seen the bodies of many police officers in the ministry building which the rebels held for several hours before pulling out in the early hours.
A police officer who gave his name only as Timur said: "In our section alone, 30 people were killed and wounded."
Chechnya's interior minister, Alu Alkhanov, who has won the Kremlin's blessing to run for the region's presidency, said he had evidence that rebel warlord Shamil Basayev masterminded the attack. Basayev, Russia's most wanted man, has been behind many sensational rebel attacks over the past 10 years.
SPILLOVER
Ingushetia's mainly Muslim people are ethnically close to the Chechens and have occasionally suffered the spillover from the secessionist war in Chechnya, which borders it to the east.
But they were stunned by the intensity of the overnight violence.
Police headquarters and a border guards building in Nazran were reduced to burned-out shells and several other buildings badly damaged. Police prevented anyone entering the interior ministry building itself. On the streets of Nazran Tuesday people wandered in a daze, some with improvised bandages on their heads and limbs. With local emergency services at full stretch, the defense ministry dispatched a military field hospital to the area. Regional authorities declared three days of mourning. A local correspondent said people were already preparing the burials of their dead by sunset, according to Muslim tradition. The rebels, who launched their offensive at around 10.40 p.m. (1840 GMT) Monday night, also staged attacks on other points in the region, including Karbulak and Sleptsovsk. Within an hour and a half they had seized the interior ministry building in Nazran. They then raided interior ministry depots, seizing weapons and destroying those they could not take with them. Police reinforcements and Russian troops based in the south rushed to the region to shore up the beleaguered local forces. Witnesses said the rebel attack, launched by militants wearing masks and green headbands, came out of the blue. A local youth who stumbled across some of the militants before the attack was told: "We have come to stay. We are already in authority here." Residents cowered in cellars as fierce fighting raged around them for several hours until it died out at about four a.m., when the rebel fighters left the interior ministry building and pulled out. |
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