Ten years after Boris Yeltsin first sent Russian troops into Chechnya to put down an attempt at independence, violence has seeped across a tier of adjoining republics creating a band of instability in the northern Caucasus. Some recent examples of the trouble:Dagestan
Jan. 15, 2005: Security forces beseige a house in Makhachkala where several gunmen are located. Five of them and a police officer are killed. Officials find guns, grenades and other explosives in a safe house.
Feb. 2, 2005: A deputy interior minister and three of his bodyguards are gunned down in an ambush on the main street of Makhachkala.
North Ossetia
Sept. 1, 2004: Hundreds of children and adults are taken hostage at a school in Beslan in an operation believed planned by Chechens. After a three-day ordeal, 331 are left dead.
Ingushetia
June 22, 2004: In well-organized night raids, gunmen set up false checkpoints in Nazran and stage attacks across the city, mostly against police and government officials; about 90 people are killed.
Kabardino-Balkaria
Jan. 27, 2005: Police kill seven suspected pro-Chechnyan Islamic insurgents after a two-day siege in the capital city of Nalchik.
Karachayevo-Cherkessia
Oct. 18, 2004: Deputy prime minister shot and killed as he drives to work in Cherkessk, the republic's capital.