Suspected Chechen rebels rampaged through a southern Russian region, mounting a brazen onslaught that killed 48 people and raised new doubts about Moscow’s ability to stamp out separatist violence. The fighters seized Ingushetia’s interior ministry building for several hours early on Tuesday and attacked other top security points. "They must be found and destroyed. Those whom it is possible to take alive must be handed over to the courts," President Vladimir Putin said angrily in comments at a Kremlin meeting with top security chiefs, shown on national television. | I don't think I'd want Vlad to take me alive. |
A Russian justice official said the rebels were trying to escape from Ingushetia into the neighbouring region of Chechnya or the independent state of Georgia after the attack. It was the biggest armed operation by rebels in the southern Russian province since war between separatists and Moscow erupted in Chechnya a decade ago. The coordinated strikes, concentrated in Ingushetia’s capital Nazran, led to fierce overnight battles as security forces fought to dislodge the rebels from the ministry building. The rebels, who also raided police arms depots and seized weapons, eventually pulled out leaving behind bodies on the streets and the burned-out shells of a police headquarters and a building housing border guards. Tass quoted police as saying a small army of up to 200 guerrillas staged the operation, that began with rebels tricking their way into checkpoints on a main highway. 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. | That's pretty bold of them. Either they are confident of their strength, or this is a desperate attempt to regain the initative. |
Forty-eight people -- including 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. A Kremlin official in the region later said however that security and police officials alone accounted for 47 dead, raising the possibility of a higher overall death toll. | Sounds like they tried for their own Tet Offensive. |
Footage broadcast by ORT Channel One television showed bodies of combatants and civilians lying in the streets, 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. 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 launched their offensive at around 10.40 p.m. (7:40 p.m. British time) on Monday night, and also staged attacks on other points in the region, including Karabulak and Sleptsovsk. Within an hour and a half they had seized the interior ministry building in Nazran. They then raided ministry depots, seizing weapons and destroying those they could not take with them. Residents cowered in cellars as fierce fighting raged around them for several hours until the rebels left the interior ministry and pulled out in the early hours. |