Rebel attacks, armed clashes and mine blasts in Chechnya left at least nine Russian servicemen, Chechen police and separatist fighters dead in the previous 24 hours, an official in the region's Moscow-backed administration said on Saturday.
Russian forces continued to target suspected rebel positions in mountainous southern Chechnya with artillery and detained more than 150 people around the region in security sweeps searching for rebels, the official said condition of anonymity.
Five Russian servicemen were killed and seven others wounded in rebel attacks on Russian positions in the region, the official said. The sixth death among Russian or pro-Moscow forces came when a Chechen riot police squad member stepped on a mine on Friday in the capital, Grozny, he said.
A clash between Russian riot police and rebels early Saturday left three police wounded, while one rebel was killed and one detained, the official said. Two rebels were killed when a land-mine they were planting near the second-largest city, Gu-dermes, exploded, the official said, and three Russian servicemen were wounded when their vehicle came under fire late Friday.
Statements by Russian and Chechen officials about casualties, particularly among rebels, are difficult to confirm.
Fighting persists in Chechnya four years after Russian forces entered the mostly Muslim region in southern Russia in 1999 in the second attempt in a decade to crush separatist rebels. Russian troops had withdrawn after a 1994-1996 war that had killed tens of thousands of soldiers, rebels and civilians and ended with the separatists in control.
The Kremlin has ruled out negotiations with rebel leaders and is portraying a regional presidential election scheduled for Oct. 5 as part of a series of steps to restore peace and stability to Chechnya. It also hailed a March referendum that cemented the region's status as part of he Russian Federation.
On Thursday the two main challengers of Chechnya's Moscow-appointed administration chief and acting president, Akhmad Kadyrov, were removed or dropped out of the presidential race.
The Supreme Court of Chechnya annulled the registration of Malik Saidullayev days after he alleged that Kadyrov's administration was using intimidation and violence against others on the ballot.
Aslanbek Aslakhanov, who represents Chechnya in the Russian parliament, announced that he was withdrawing from the race to become an adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Recent opinion polls had shown that both Saidullayev and Aslanbek Aslakhanov were far more popular than Kadyrov among voters in Chechnya.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.