More than 100 police and security agents backed by five armored personnel carriers surrounded a house in the restive southern Russian region of Ingushetia on Saturday and killed five alleged militants in a shootout, the Interior Ministry said.
The suspects had resisted capture, opening fire with automatic weapons and throwing grenades, said Yuri Smolyaninov, a spokesman for the Ingush regional branch of the Federal Security Service, the main successor to the Soviet KGB.
PHOTO: AFP
He said the special operation to eliminate the militants had been completed by early afternoon.
The alleged militants were suspected in the attacks on Ingush police installations in June in which about 90 people were killed, said a duty officer in the Russian Interior Ministry's southern regional branch in Rostov-on-Don, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The operation to capture or kill the militants began early Saturday morning, Russian news agencies reported. There were no casualties among law enforcement officers or civilians in the shootout, the Interior Ministry duty officer said.
State-controlled television showed footage of the smoking ruins of a brick building, the wooden planks of its roof in splinters. A body could be seen sprawling in the wreckage.
NTV television said that the bodies of four militants were found shortly after the shootout ended, and the fifth was discovered only Saturday night. Investigators were to resume their search of the wreckage on Sunday, the duty officer said.
The Interfax news agency quoted Sergei Koryakov, the head of the Ingush branch of the Federal Security Service, as saying the dead militants had plotted further attacks.
"According to our information, the bandits who have been liquidated in the current operation, planned terrorist acts on the territory of the [Ingush] republic," Koryakov was quoted as saying.
In the June attacks, which targeted police and security officials, militants raided arsenals and seized a large number of weapons. A video released later showed Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev and other camouflaged men pulling weapons and ammunition boxes off shelves in a building Basayev said was an Interior Ministry arsenal.
Authorities have said some of the stolen weapons were used in the September hostage-taking at the school in Beslan, in neighboring North Ossetia, in which more than 330 people were killed. Basayev has claimed responsibility for the Beslan raid and other recent terror attacks in Russia.
Police in Dagestan, another troubled region, were conducting an anti-terrorist sweep on Saturday for a fourth day. The regional Interior Ministry said reinforcements were brought in from neighboring regions for the operation, which began on Wednesday in the Khasavyurt region bordering Chechnya, and continued on Friday and Saturday in the regional capital Makhachkala.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia