Heavily-armed militants launched near-simultaneous overnight attacks against police headquarters, border guard stations and other government offices in Ingushetia, a Russian region bordering warring Chechnya, killing 46 people including three high-ranking regional officials, officials said yesterday.
The fighters seized the Interior Ministry in Nazran, the largest city in Ingushetia, and attacked the border guards' headquarters there as well as in two villages near the border with Chechnya in an overnight foray that began shortly before midnight on Monday, regional emergency officials said.
By late yesterday morning, after thousands of Russian anti-terrorist special forces officers and servicemen streamed into Nazran, most of the militants had retreated and the Russian military was engaged in a massive search operation aimed at choking off their exit. Some of the militants seized Nazran residents' cars to make their getaway, residents said.
Two militants were killed, Russian media reported. An AP reporter saw the body of one militant near a blockpost in the village of Yandare. There was no official comment about the fate of the other assailants, which officials had initially said numbered about 100. The ITAR-Tass news agency reported that police were fighting with fleeing militants in Galashki, in a forested area near the Chechen border, ITAR-Tass said.
Major General Ilya Shabalkin, spokesman for the Russian forces in Chechnya, blamed Chechen rebels for planning the attacks, but said the raids -- carried out by men armed with grenade- and rocket-launchers -- involved fighters from both Chechnya and Ingushetia, the Interfax-Military News Agency reported. Earlier, officials said some of the fighters shouted "Allahu akhbar" -- a rallying cry of Chechnya's separatist rebels as their insurgency comes under the influence of radical Islam.
Chechen Interior Minister Alu Alkhanov, the Kremlin-supported candidate in Chechnya's upcoming presidential elections, told the ITAR-Tass news agency that he believed Chechen rebel commander Shamil Basayev, who has been blamed for some of the most audacious attacks, was behind the foray.
Yakhya Khadziyev, spokesman for Ingushetia's Interior Ministry, said the 46 dead included 18 police officers and 28 civilians. He said that a military field hospital was delivered to Nazran and set up, a possible indication of the large scale of casualties expected.
reinforcements
Russian authorities sent in reinforcements shortly after dawn yesterday. The forces moved into Nazran through the border village of Chermen in neighboring North Ossetia, in a lengthy column of armored personnel carriers and army trucks. Inside the city, firefighters fought blazes at the Interior Ministry and its weapons storehouse as residents cowered in their homes.
Russian TV broadcast footage of smoke-charred buildings and burned out cars and vans. Gray-colored smoke was still pouring from at least one of the brick buildings. Ingush President Murat Zyazikov spoke numerous times by telephone to Russian President Vladimir Putin to update him on the situation, ITAR-Tass reported.
Khadziyev said that 30 people were injured, although he warned that number could grow. Earlier, the Ingush catastrophic medical center said that 59 wounded people had been hospitalized and 16 of them had died. A firefighter who would reveal only his first name, Aslan, said he had seen more than 10 corpses on the streets of Nazran, and other witnesses reported seeing five more bodies on the outskirts of Nazran.
"Wherever we were, there were armed people, some in uniform, some not, and you didn't know whose side they were on," Aslan said.
ineffectiveness
Fighting from the Chechen war -- the second war in a decade -- has occasionally spilled into Ingushetia, highlighting the Russian military's ineffectiveness against the rebels despite having heavier weapons and far superior manpower.
There was heavy fighting in Karabulak, where militants attacked a border guard and customs post and a police station, and the assailants seized a police checkpoint in the village of Yandare, officials said.
Acting Ingush Interior Minister Abukar Kostoyev was wounded in the first minutes of the fighting in Nazran and was taken to Vladikavkaz in North Ossetia, where he died, the Ingush Interior Ministry official said.
Officials said the health minister and a deputy interior minister of Ingushetia had also been killed in the fighting in Nazran, while ITAR-Tass said Nazran city prosecutor Mukharbek Buzurtanov and Nazran district prosecutor Bilan Oziyev had died as well.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese