BRIEFS

– YEDELEV SAYS ONLY 450 REBELS ARE LEFT

Kavkazky Uzel, on March 19, quoted General Arkady Yedelev, head of the Regional Operations Headquarters for the Anti-Terrorist Operation, as telling reporters in Grozny that rebel forces in Chechnya currently consist of 37 armed groups totaling 450 people. “That number includes not only the irreconcilable members of gangs, who are conductors of the policy of international terrorists, but also the criminal element, for whom the activities of the illegal armed formations have become a business and a way to make money,” he said. Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, for his part, vowed that the rebels will be eliminated within two months, RIA Novosti reported on March 19. ITAR-Tass quoted Kadyrov as saying: “We know where the militants are and what they are doing. We will chase them, and I am confident there will be no militants in the republic soon.” Kadyrov said the problem is that many militants have been hiding in neighboring Russian regions. “The leader of foreign mercenaries, Abu Hafs, was destroyed in Dagestan, and Shamil Basaev was killed in Ingushetia,” he said. “They practically did not live in our republic and spent most of time in the neighboring regions.” Meanwhile, the Chechen rebels said they could not confirm claims by federal law-enforcement bodies in Chechnya that rebel field commander Takhir Bataev, aka Amir Takhir, was killed during combat in Gudermes on March 21.

– SHOOTOUT IN DAGESTANI VILLAGE WOUNDS A POLICEMAN AND A BYSTANDER

Kavkazky Uzel reported on March 19 that a shootout took place in the Dagestani village of Gimry during special operation aimed at seizing illegal weaponry. Law-enforcement sources reported that during the operation, unknown attackers threw a grenade at a police car that was passing by, wounding a local policeman, but that no militants were found in the house from which the grenade was allegedly tossed. A woman in a neighboring house reportedly received a gunshot wound in the arm when security forces opened fire on the house from which the grenade was allegedly thrown. On March 14, a gunman firing on a car in the Dagestani town of Khasavyurt killed two Federal Security Service agents and wounded another (Chechnya Weekly, March 15).

– SEPARATIST VICE PRESIDENT APPOINTED

The separatist Kavkaz-Center website on March 19 published a decree by ChRI President Dokka Umarov naming Supyan Abdullaev as ChRI vice president. According to biographical information that was published along with the decree, Abdullaev is a brigadier general of the rebel forces who has headed the Shali sector of the rebel Eastern Front since autumn 2003.