July 6, 2003	Sunday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 5,1424

MOSCOW, July 5: Russian police said on Saturday that an attack that killed at least 20 people, including two suicide bombers on Saturday, was similar to a Chechen assault that killed 129 civilians in a Moscow hostage siege last October.

Rashid Nurgaliyev, Russia’s deputy interior minister, was quoted as saying by Interfax that the suicide belts used by the two Chechen women followed a pattern of attacks.

“Based on what the belts contained, and how they were made, this follows the formula that was used at Nord-Ost” theater, the site of October’s hostage drama, he was quoted as saying.

Nurgaliyev added that the two suicide bombers, according to an on-the-spot investigation, have been liked to separatist guerrillas based in Chechnya.

JOURNALIST GOES MISSING: A local AFP journalist covering the conflict in Chechnya was grabbed by masked, armed men on Friday in the neighboring republic of Ingushetia, his colleague who witnessed the act said.

Ali Astamirov had arrived at a gas station in the Ingush capital Nazran with a local colleague who works for US radio Liberty and news agency Reuters when three camoflauged men threatened them with guns and stole their mobile phones.

The three men — two of whom wore masks — then forced Astamirov into their white unmarked car and drove away, the journalist said.

Astamirov has covered the Chechen war and the refugee situation in Ingushetia for Agence France-Presse for more than a year, writing extensively on the human rights abuses allegedly committed by Russian troops serving in the region.—AFP