Russian security services have killed two Islamist rebels behind attacks that have fueled fears of a broadening insurrection in the north Caucasus region, Interfax news agency said.
The agency quoted the Federal Security Service (FSB) as saying Rustam Dzortov and Zaur Uzhakov, shot dead in Ingushetia late on Friday, were behind a June assassination attempt on Ingush President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov and the suicide bombing of a police station that killed 25 people last month.
Moscow has declared victory, perhaps prematurely, in its campaign against separatist rebels in Chechnya.
But shootings and bombings have spread in recent months to the neighboring, largely Muslim regions of Dagestan and Ingushetia on Russia’s southern fringes.
Russian television showed film of the saloon car used by the two men slewed sideways across a narrow road by a railway bridge.
“Dzortov … headed the entire criminal underworld in Ingushetia and was the immediate organizer of the attack on President Yevkurov,” an FSB spokesman told the Russian news agency.
“His accomplice Uzhakhov was directly responsible for the organization of the terrorist attack near the Nazran district police department,” the spokesman said.
Islamist rebels seek to establish an Islamic state on Russia’s southern fringes.
Moscow, which believes the insurgents are backed by militants from the Middle East and south Asia, sees suppression of separatism as essential to the stability of a country that spans 11 time zones and dozens of nationalities.
Yevkurov returned to Ingushetia last month after recuperating in Moscow and has since warned that more suicide bombings are possible.
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