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Tell It To Someone More AFP and AP slop below via Yahoo. Didn't define "active military actions." Not that Americans care. They are too busy talking
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22 Killed in Attacks on Russia Government
6/22/04 By YURI BAGROV, Associated Press Writer CHERMEN, Russia - Heavily-armed
militants launched coordinated attacks against police
headquarters, border checkpoints and government offices in a
Russian region bordering warring Chechnya, authorities said Tuesday. At least 22 people were
killed, including three high-ranking officials, and dozens were
wounded.
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 Chechnya
shortly before midnight Monday, emergency officials said.
The Ingush medical center said that 59 injured people were
hospitalized and 16 of them had died. The ITAR-Tass news agency,
citing law enforcement officials, said five of the dead were
policemen.
Witnesses reported at least six more people dead in an attack
on a border guards' post on the outskirts of Nazran.
"There are a lot of casualties, both from the law
enforcement side and among civilians," the Interfax news
agency quoted Ingush President Murat Zyazikov as saying.
An official from the Ingush Interior Ministry said it was not
immediately clear who the attackers were, but said some of them
were shouting "Allahu akhbar" — a frequent cry of
Chechnya's separatist rebels as their insurgency increasingly
comes under the influence of radical Islam. Police estimated
that up to 100 militants, armed with grenade- and
rocket-launchers, were involved in the assaults.
Thousands of Russian anti-terrorist special forces headed
into Nazran, through the border village of Chermen in
neighboring North Ossetia, in a long column of armored personnel
carriers and army trucks shortly after dawn Tuesday. Inside the
city, firefighters fought blazes at the Interior Ministry and
its weapons storehouse, as residents cowered in their homes.
Fighting from the Chechen war has occasionally spilled into
Ingushetia, highlighting the Russian military's ineffectiveness
against the rebels despite having heavier weapons and far
superior manpower. The last major Ingush incursion was in
October 2002, when fighters killed 17 Russian troops.
The latest attack comes after recent statements by separatist
leaders indicating plans to step up military actions outside of
Chechnya.
"We are planning to change tactics. Before, we
concentrated our efforts on acts of sabotage, but soon we are
planing to start active military actions," Chechnya's
separatist president Aslan Maskhadov said in an interview on
Radio Liberty last week.
A three-man crew from Russia's NTV television came upon some
of the presumed attackers, wearing masks and speaking accented
Russian, at a border crossing as the crew tried to enter Nazran
from North Ossetia.
"Out of the dark, a voice says 'Stop, put your hands on
the hood,' said NTV correspondent Maxim Berezin. "A man
carrying an automatic weapon came up. 'Who are you?'"
"Then he said, 'Say that we are the Martyr's Brigade.
...We have shot everyone here. Go and announce that.'"
Berezin saw the bodies of at least six men in camouflage —
the uniform of security service members — lying outside a
minivan.
There was heavy fighting in Karabulak, where the militants
attacked a border guard and customs post and a police station,
and the assailants seized a police checkpoint in the village of
Yandare, Ingush emergency 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. A convoy of three ambulances later could
be seen speeding into Vladikavkaz from Ingushetia.
Ingush emergency officials said that the health minister and
a deputy interior minister had also been killed in the fighting
in Nazran, while Interfax said a city prosecutor and a district
prosecutor had died as well.
Police at the Chermen checkpoint on the North Ossetian border
said that a 10-vehicle Russian military convoy had been ambushed
en route to Nazran. Three vehicles from the column were later
seen returning to Vladikavkaz, the North Ossetian capital,
carrying an unclear number of casualties.
By early Tuesday, Russian forces had fought off the rebels
attacking the border guards' headquarters in Nazran, Ingush
emergency officials said.
As dawn broke, there was still sporadic shooting in the city
and in Karabulak, but the fighters were stealing away.
Although Chechnya is a largely Muslim region in
overwhelmingly Christian Russia, the first of Chechnya's two
wars was an essentially secular conflict. However, after Russian
troops pulled out when Chechen rebels fought them to a
standstill, the separatists increasingly took on a specifically
Islamic mantle.
Monday's fighting came as Russian and Moscow-backed Chechen
officials prepared for an August election to replace
Kremlin-backed Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov, who was killed
in a bomb attack last month. The Kremlin has put forward its
candidate, Chechen Interior Minister Alu Alkhanov.
Some Russians noted that the attacks on Ingushetia came on
the eve of June 22 — the 63rd anniversary of the Nazi invasion
of the Soviet Union, a date engraved in Russians' minds.
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