VLADIKAVKAZ, Russia - Assailants armed with grenade- and rocket-launchers seized the Interior Ministry headquarters in Ingushetia, a Russian region bordering warring Chechnya (news - web sites), killing the acting minister, a ministry official said Tuesday. Attacks were also reported elsewhere in Ingushetia.
The Interior Ministry official said it was not immediately clear who the attackers were, but said some of them were shouting "Allahu akhbar" â a frequent cry of Chechnyaâs separatist rebels as their insurgency increasingly comes under the influence of radical Islam.
On Monday, the newspaper Kommersant quoted Chechnyaâs separatist president Aslan Maskhadov as saying that rebels were preparing to undertake new tactics.
The attack on the ministry building in the city of Nazran began late Monday, the official said on condition of anonymity. He later said other attackers seized police buildings in Ordzhonikidzevskaya, just over the border from Chechnya, and in Karabulak. Acting Ingush interior minister Abukar Koshtoyev was wounded in the first minutes of the fighting in Nazran and was taken to Vladikavkaz in neighboring North Ossetia, where he died, the ministry official said.
The ITAR-Tass news agency reported that the building of the border guard service in Nazran and an Interior Ministry warehouse in the city were on fire.
Heavy shooting was also reported in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, which borders Chechnya to the east, the Interfax news agency said, citing an official of the local office of the Federal Security Service. However, shooting is common in Dagestan, and it was not immediately clear whether there was any connection to the attacks in Ingushetia.
On Monday, an official in the Moscow-backed Chechen administration said that six Russian soldiers had been killed in rebel attacks and explosions over the past day. 
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