A suicide bomber killed seven people including a top Russian policeman yesterday when he drove his car into a police convoy in the southern Russian region of Ingushetia.
Among the dead was Dzhabrail Kostoyev, deputy head of the Ingushetia interior ministry, two of his guards, and four civilians, a police spokesman said.
They were killed when a sedan packed with explosives blocked a road on the outskirts of the region's main city of Nazran and blew up, regional police officials and an Interior Ministry spokesman in southern Russia said.
Preliminary findings suggest that a suicide attacker was in the car that exploded, ministry spokesman Roman Shchekotin said. However, Ingushetia's Security Council chief, Bashir Aushev, said it was also possible that the car-bomb was detonated by remote control.
The news came simultaneously with a report from Interfax news agency that unknown gunmen had killed the governor of a detention center in the region of Karachayevo-Cherkessia, further from Chechnya but also increasingly prone to violence.
Rebels have pledged total war against police in the North Caucasus, saying they are collaborating with Russian occupiers.
Islamist Web sites yesterday published comments from a rebel commander in Ingushetia, who pledged such attacks would increase.
"This morning the deputy minister was going to work from the village of Ekazhevo to the town of Nazran. A car containing the suicide bomber drove onto the road from a side-street ... at the moment the convoy was passing," the spokesman said.
"An investigating group is working at the site to find out the details," he said.
Television showed scraps of twisted metal scattered along the road in the low-rise town of Nazran. The twisted wreck of a Soviet-built Zhiguli car was overshadowed by a blue advertising hoarding scarred and pitted by shrapnel.
Ingushetia, which borders Chechnya and is inhabited by people closely related to the Chechens, has in recent years seen fighting that has plagued its neighbor since the end of the Soviet Union.
"One of our clear duties is targeted work against specific individuals, and also preparation for appropriate military operations to destroy certain targets as an answer to the actions of the infidel," said Magomed Yevloyev, commander or "Amir" of the Ingush rebels, on www.kavkazcenter.com.
He said he had just returned from a meeting of rebel commanders with warlord Shamil Basayev, who has led the worst attacks on civilians in the 11 years of the Chechen war and tries to coordinate Islamist strikes across the Caucasus.
Fighting spread from Chechnya to the neighboring regions of Dagestan and Ingushetia after Russian troops poured into de facto independent Chechnya in 1999, and is increasingly breaking out in the regions of Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachayevo-Cherkessia further to the West.
Interfax said yesterday that Khasan Zhanakayev, governor of the Cherkessk detention center, had been shot dead in his car on his way to work.
A series of suicide bombings since 2000 have killed hundreds of people in Russia, targeting planes, trains, concerts, government buildings and other objects, but their use has tailed off of late.
The last deadly suicide attack killed nine police in Chechnya in early 2005, although one such militant blew himself up without causing any other casualties in Dagestan in December.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
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
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
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in