Jun 22, 2004
By YURI BAGROV
CHERMEN, Russia (AP) - Thousands of troops streamed into a southern Russian city on Tuesday in pursuit of suspected Chechen rebels who set fire to police and government buildings and killed 48 people, three of them high-ranking regional officials, in a series of brazen overnight attacks.
The militants' foray into the province of Ingushetia underscored the Russian military's failure to defeat separatists in neighboring Chechnya after five years of fighting, and raised new fears that violence could spread to other parts of southern Russia.
The attacks also came amid preparations for an August election to replace Kremlin-backed Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov, who was killed last month in a bomb attack that was seen as a significant blow to President Vladimir Putin's efforts to bring some stability to warring Chechnya.
Shortly before midnight Monday, about 100 fighters armed with grenades and rocket launchers seized the regional Interior Ministry in Nazran, the largest city in Ingushetia, and attacked border guard posts there and in two villages near the border with Chechnya, Karabulak and Yandare, regional emergency officials said.
(AP) Officials stay near a damaged police jeep and the body of a policemen early Tuesday, June 22, 2004,...
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Russian authorities sent in reinforcements shortly after dawn Tuesday. The anti-terrorism troops and soldiers moved into Nazran through the border village of Chermen in neighboring North Ossetia, in a long column of armored personnel carriers and army trucks.
By midmorning, most of the militants had already fled into the thick forests on the border of Ingushetia and Chechnya, authorities said. Ingush President Murat Zyazikov told Interfax news agency that a large number of weapons and ammunition were also missing from police depots.
The Russian media reported only two militant deaths. An Associated Press reporter also saw the body of one militant near Yandare. At least one group of rebels was caught by police as they retreated through Galashki, near the Chechen border, and a firefight was under way, said Yakhya Khadziyev, spokesman for Ingushetia's Interior Ministry.
Maj. Gen. Ilya Shabalkin, spokesman for the Russian forces in Chechnya, blamed Chechen rebels for planning the attacks, but said the raids were carried out by fighters recruited from both Chechnya and Ingushetia, the Interfax-Military News Agency reported.
"The attacks were clearly saber rattling, aimed to demonstrate the rebels' effectiveness to attract funding from foreign terrorist networks," he was quoted as saying.
Earlier, officials noted how some of the fighters shouted "Allahu akhbar" - a frequent rallying cry of Chechnya's separatist rebels as their insurgency increasingly comes under the influence of radical Islam.
Khadziyev said the death toll was at 48, including at least 18 police officers and 28 civilians. The Russian military had set up a field hospital in Nazran to treat the estimated 60 injured, he said.
Russian television broadcast footage of smoke-charred buildings and burned-out vehicles. Smoke was still pouring from at least one of the brick buildings.
Chechnya's Interior Minister Alu Alkhanov, the Kremlin-supported candidate in Chechnya's upcoming presidential elections, told ITAR-Tass that he believed Chechen rebel commander Shamil Basayev, who has been blamed for some of the most audacious attacks, was behind the foray.
Chechnya's separatist president Aslan Maskhadov had also warned recently that insurgents were preparing to undertake new offensives.
"We are planning to change tactics. Before, we concentrated our efforts on acts of sabotage, but soon we are planning to start active military actions," Maskhadov was quoted as saying in an interview excerpted on Radio Liberty.
A three-man crew from Russia's NTV television came upon some of the presumed attackers, wearing masks and speaking accented Russian, at a border crossing with North Ossetia. One of the attackers, carrying an automatic weapon, identified the group as "the Martyr's Brigade," said correspondent Maxim Berezin and the man added, "We have shot everyone here. Go and announce that."
Acting Ingush Interior Minister Abukar Kostoyev, the health minister and a deputy interior minister were killed in the fighting, officials said. ITAR-Tass said Nazran city prosecutor Mukharbek Buzurtanov and Nazran district prosecutor Bilan Oziyev had died, as well.
Although Chechnya is a largely Muslim region in overwhelmingly Christian Russia, the first of Chechnya's two wars was an essentially secular conflict. However, after Russian troops pulled out when Chechen rebels fought them to a standstill, the separatists increasingly took on a specifically Islamic mantle.
The last major incursion into Ingushetia was in October 2002, when a band of fighters attacked Russian forces near Galashki, killing 17 servicemen.
Some Russians noted that the attacks on Ingushetia came on the eve of June 22 - the 63rd anniversary of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union and a date engraved in Russians' minds.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20040622/D83C13VO0.html