A militant who planned to carry out a terrorist attack in Moscow was killed in Chechnya last night, the Russian North Caucasus republic interior ministry said. “A Makarov pistol, a grenade with a fuse, seven electric detonators with wires and a ‘shahid’s belt’ were discovered and confiscated at the scene. The criminal had a railroad ticket for the Kizlyar-Moscow train. According to available operational information, he planned to carry out a terrorist act in Moscow,” the ministry said.
Posts Tagged ‘North Caucasus’
Ingush minister shot dead at work
August 12th, 2009 |
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The construction minister of the volatile Russian republic of Ingushetia has been murdered, Russian news agencies report.
Ruslan Amerkhanov was shot dead in his office in the town of Magas, local officials told Itar-Tass news agency.
Attacks on government officials have become more common in the troubled, mainly Muslim North Caucasus republic.
In June, Ingushetia’s President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt.
The Ingush interior ministry said an unidentified gunman shot and killed Mr Amerkhanov at point-blank range in his office.
Ingushetia has seen escalating clashes between security forces and armed militants in the past year, similar to the violence that continues in neighbouring Chechnya.
Three employees of Russia’s emergencies ministry were shot dead in Ingushetia ten days ago.
In Chechnya, Russian forces were engaged in heavy fighting with separatist rebels until a few years ago, though the fighting has become much less intense recently.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
‘Eight rebels killed’ in Dagestan
July 28th, 2009 |
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At least eight suspected militants have been killed by Russian security forces in the troubled southern republic of Dagestan, local officials have said.
The men were shot dead by members of the Federal Security Service during an hour-long gun battle in a forest near the capital, Makhachkala, they added.
In neighbouring Chechnya, a militant was killed during a raid in the Urus-Martanovskiy district, reports say.
The clashes came after a suicide bomber killed six people in Grozny on Sunday.
The man blew himself up after police stopped him while he attempted to gain entry to a concert hall in the Chechen capital.
Growing insurgency
Violence has flared in the North Caucasus in recent months, with dozens of militants and members of the security forces being killed.
In June, the President of Ingushetia, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, was critically injured by a car bomb in an apparent assassination attempt.
Two weeks earlier, Dagestan’s interior minister was shot dead.
Russian forces have fought two wars against Islamist separatists in the mainly Muslim republic of Chechnya since 1994. The conflicts claimed more than 100,000 lives and left it in ruins.
Chechnya has in recent years been more peaceful, but the fighting has spread to Dagestan and Ingushetia, where correspondents say a violent Islamist insurgency is growing.</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Six militants killed in Russian special op.
July 26th, 2009 |
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6 militants were killed Saturday in a special operation in Chechnya, and 5 policemen were wounded, the Russian North Caucasus republic’s interior minister said. “Operation information was received that a group of illegal armed unit members is hiding in a house in the Goity village. Policemen blocked the house, but the militants opened fire on policemen,” Ruslan Alkhanov said.
Russian activist found murdered
July 15th, 2009 |
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A prominent Russian human rights activist, Natalia Estemirova, has been found dead in the North Caucasus.
She was bundled into a van and abducted as she left her home in Chechnya on Wednesday morning, a colleague said.
Her body was later found in neighbouring Ingushetia with wounds to the head, according to the Chechen interior ministry.
Ms Estemirova had been investigating human rights abuses in Chechnya for the Memorial group. </p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Russian rights campaigner murdered
July 15th, 2009 |
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Natalia Estemirova found shot dead after being abducted outside her home
Russia’s human rights record tonight came under severe criticism after one of the country’s most famous human rights campaigners was abducted from her home in Chechnya and brutally murdered.
Natalia Estemirova was seized by four unknown men this morning as she left for work. Neighbours at her house in Grozny, Chechnya’s capital, heard her shout: “I’m being kidnapped.”
Her body was found near Gazi-Yurt village, in neighbouring Ingushetia. She had been shot twice in the head and chest, police said, adding that her corpse had been dumped on the main road.
Human rights activists expressed outrage at her murder, reminiscent of the killing of Anna Politkovskaya, the journalist, writer, and bitter Kremlin critic shot dead outside her Moscow apartment in 2006.
Estemirova, 50, was a close friend of Politkovskaya’s. The two had collaborated on numerous investigations into human rights abuses in Chechnya. Both were scathing opponents of Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya’s pro-Kremlin president.
“Natasha was at the forefront of some of the most intense human rights investigations in Chechnya,” said Allison Gill, director of Human Rights Watch in Russia. “She was targeted because of her work. I have no doubt her killing was to silence her. One of the most amazing things about Natasha is that she never stopped doing what she was doing. She never checked herself. She was highly public in her calls for accountability.
“I think the human rights situation is in crisis in Russia,” she added. “We have a deathly silence from the authorities whenever activists, lawyers or journalists are murdered. Not a single person is brought to justice.”
Estemirova was the Chechnya-based head of Memorial, Russia’s oldest human rights group.
Operating out of a small office in Grozny, she doggedly pursued stories of human rights abuses in the face of official intimidation and hostility.
She recently collaborated on two damning reports into punitive house burnings and extra-judicial killings in Chechnya, allegedly carried out by Kadyrov’s forces. The reports documented how on 2 July his troops allegedly shot 20-year-old Madina Yunusova and her husband near Grozny.
Chechen officials claimed her husband had been involved in a plot to kill Kadyrov. Yunosova died three days later in hospital under mysterious circumstances.
“Natasha was always involved in the most sensitive cases. She knew what she was doing. She knew the risks,” Shamil Tangiyev, a former Memorial colleague said. “She was extremely brave. It was in her nature to be an activist.”
Estemirova made no attempt to hide her work. Her office near the newly renamed Putin avenue was well known.
The timing of her murder follows Barack Obama’s first visit to Moscow last week as US president. Obama met with Russian human rights activists and set out the US’s commitment to “universal values”.
The Kremlin responded with hardline pronouncements, with the president, Dmitry Medvedev, visiting the breakaway Georgian republic of South Ossetia on Monday. The trip appeared to be a direct rebuff to Obama who had said that both Georgia and Ukraine should be free to choose their own leaders.
Estemirova, who leaves a 15-year-old daughter, was probably the best-known human rights activist in Russia’s provinces.
Earlier this year she attended the trial in Moscow of four people – two of them Chechens – accused of involvement in Politkovskaya’s murder.
Speaking to the Guardian in February, Estemirova called the Politkovskaya trial a “farce”.
Kadyrov, a close ally of Russia’s prime minister, Vladimir Putin, has denied accusations he was involved in Politkovskaya’s killing, remarking: “I don’t kill women.”
Recently the Kremlin has given Kadyrov unprecedented powers for counter-terrorist operations in Ingushetia, amid a worsening Islamist insurgency across the entire North Caucasus.
Estemirova was also a close colleague of Stanislav Markelov, the human rights lawyer murdered in Moscow in January. A masked assassin shot Markelov in the back of the head, not far from the Kremlin, along with Anastasia Baburova, a journalist with the Novaya Gazeta newspaper.
Tonight human rights activists urged the west to place human rights at the centre of any dialogue with Russia. Gill said: “We can’t talk about trade or energy without mentioning the rule of law.”
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Chechnya ambush leaves four dead
July 15th, 2009 |
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Two police officers and two soldiers have been killed in a gun battle with militants in the southern Russian republic of Chechnya, officials say.
They were ambushed in the Vedenskiy district late on Tuesday by up to 15 gunmen, who later fled, they added. Six other security personnel were injured.
Later, a court bailiff and a relative were killed in neighbouring Ingushetia.
Violence in the North Caucasus since Saturday has left 10 security personnel and 23 militants dead, officials say.
Overnight on Monday, a policeman was killed and six others injured by a bomb explosion in the Chechen capital, Grozny, while three militants and a soldier were shot dead during a gun battle in Dagestan, authorities in the two republics said.
Earlier, gunmen ambushed a Dagestani police patrol, reportedly killing two officers. A sniper shot dead a third officer in a separate incident.
Growing insurgency
The latest clashes come after a string of successful attacks by militants on high-level government targets in the North Caucasus.
Last month, the president of Ingushetia, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, was critically injured by a car bomb in an apparent assassination attempt.
Two weeks earlier, Dagestan’s interior minister was shot dead.
Russian forces have fought two wars against Islamist separatists in the mainly Muslim republic of Chechnya since 1994. The conflicts claimed more than 100,000 lives and left it in ruins.
Chechnya has in recent years been more peaceful, but the fighting has spread to Dagestan and Ingushetia, where correspondents say a violent Islamist insurgency is growing.
In April, President Dmitry Medvedev ordered the end of a decade-long "counter-terrorism operation" in Chechnya, which was supposed to pave the way for the withdrawal of thousands of federal troops.
But the BBC’s Rupert Wingfield-Hayes in Moscow says that the violence of the past five days shows that despite government claims, the insurgency in the North Caucasus is far from being defeated.</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
8 militants killed in Chechnya special op
July 12th, 2009 |
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8 militants have been killed in special operations in three regions of Chechnya since last night, the North Caucasus republic’s interior ministry said Sunday. During the night, police tried to stop a car for a search in the Zavodsky district of the capital, Grozny. Shots were fired from the car, and “in the return fire three members of armed groups were killed,” the ministry said in a statement.