A suicide bomber killed seven people including a top Russian policeman on Wednesday when he drove his car into a police convoy in the southern Russian region of Ingushetia. Among the dead was Dzhabrail Kostoyev, deputy head of the Ingushetia Interior Ministry, two of his guards, and four civilians, a police spokesman said. The news came simultaneously with a report from Interfax news agency that unknown gunmen had killed the governor of a detention centre in the region of Karachayevo-Cherkessia, further from Chechnya but also increasingly prone to violence. Rebels have pledged total war against police in the North Caucasus, saying they are collaborating with Russian occupiers. Islamist Web sites on Wednesday published comments from a rebel commander in Ingushetia, who pledged such attacks would increase. “This morning the deputy minister was going to work from the village of Ekazhevo to the town of Nazran. A car containing the suicide bomber drove onto the road from a side-street ... at the moment the convoy was passing,” the spokesman said.
“An investigating group is working at the site to find out the details,” he said. Television showed scraps of twisted metal scattered along the road in the low-rise town of Nazran. The twisted wreck of a Soviet-built Zhiguli car was overshadowed by a blue advertising hoarding scarred and pitted by shrapnel. Ingushetia, which borders Chechnya and is inhabited by people closely related to the Chechens, has in recent years seen fighting that has plagued its neighbour since the end of the Soviet Union. “One of our clear duties is targeted work against specific individuals, and also preparation for appropriate military operations to destroy certain targets as an answer to the actions of the infidel,” said Magomed Yevloyev, commander or “Amir” of the Ingush rebels, on www.kavkazcenter.com. He said he had just returned from a meeting of rebel commanders with warlord Shamil Basayev, who has led the worst attacks on civilians in the 11 years of the Chechen war and tries to coordinate Islamist strikes across the Caucasus.