47 security personnel killed in Ingushetia: Rebels attack 15 sites
NAZRAN, June 22: At least 57 people, including 47 security officials were killed on Tuesday in rebel attacks in Ingushetia, neighbouring Chechnya, news reports quoted the regional interior minister as saying.
The rebels simultaneously struck three towns in Ingushetia, setting fire to a police building and attacking 14 other sites, shutting off major roads in the region before disappearing in small groups back into Chechnya.
An Ingush who worked for the United Nations, Magomed Getazayev, was killed in a shootout in the Caucasus republic's largest town, Nazran. Up to 200 guerillas armed with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons carried out a series of strikes that began late Monday.
Mr Putin's regional spokesman said that at least 47 members of the security forces died. The bodies of only two killed Chechens have been discovered, although the toll may also be higher because Chechens take their casualties in battle with them to be buried at home.
Terrified residents of Nazran spent the night cowering in their homes to sounds of automatic gunfire, mortars, grenade launchers, and Russian army helicopters flying overhead, witnesses said.
After a night of clashes, the rebels melted away by 3:00 am, leaving a scene of devastation in the centre of Nazran. Six bodies, three of them completely burnt, were lying in a central square, with bloodstains and fragments of brain splattered on the ground and the wrecks of four destroyed vehicles, including a police minibus, a correspondent reported.
The fighters targeted police stations, government buildings and checkpoints in Nazran, Karabulak and Sleptsovsk during the raid, which witnesses said began some time after 10:00 pm (1800 GMT) on Monday.
Mogammed Saprolei, 40, whose home is near the interior ministry headquarters in Nazran, described scenes of chaos as the assault started. "A policeman who passed us as he was running away said they had come from everywhere. The rebels walked right up to the interior ministry headquarters and I heard them shout "Allah-o-Akbar" (God is greatest)," he said.
"They came and went away without any problem." Ingushetia houses tens of thousands of refugees who fled the war in Chechnya and many Chechen rebels have taken shelter there. The Chechen rebel website Kavkazcenter hailed the outcome of the raids.
Chechen pro-Moscow officials accused Chechnya's rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov of giving the green light to the attacks although they suggested radical warlord Shamil Basayev had actually carried them out.
A spokesman for Maskhadov told Moscow Echo radio that the former rebel president was not responsible for the raids, but he too suggested that Basayev - seen as public enemy number one in Russia - might have been. -AFP
