…As Gunmen Attack Police and FSB Officers

The violence at the protest in Nazran on September 19 took place against the backdrop of continued insurgent attacks on law-enforcement personnel in Ingushetia. Unidentified attackers shot up a UAZ vehicle carrying policemen in central Nazran on September 19, Interfax reported. According to the news agency, four policemen from Rostov Oblast who were stationed in Ingushetia were injured in the attack, two of whom later died in the hospital. The two murdered policemen were identified as Sergei Frolikov and Sergei Moshenko.

On September 18, unknown gunmen shot and killed Major Adrokhman Neiriev, the acting head of the criminal investigation department of the police in Ingushetia’s Sunzha district, in the village of Ordzhonikidzevskaya as he was leaving a mosque following evening prayers. Reuters on September 19 quoted police as saying that the gunmen escaped in a car that was later found abandoned with a sub-machinegun left inside. According to Russian news agencies, Neiriev took over as acting head of the Sunzha district police’s criminal investigation department from his boss Isa Merzhoev, who was shot and seriously wounded by unknown gunmen in the village of Troitskaya on August 13 (Chechnya Weekly, August 16).

On September 17, unidentified gunmen opened fire on Alikhan Kalimatov, an FSB lieutenant colonel, and his friend Beslan Ozdoev, outside the “Vainakh” café on the Caucasus federal highway in Ingushetia’s Nazran district. Kalimatov died at the scene while Ozdoev was rushed to a local hospital in critical condition, Russian news agencies reported. Interfax quoted a source in Ingushetia’s Interior Ministry as saying that Kalimatov was a brother of the former prosecutor of Ingushetia, Mukhmud-Ali Kalimatov, and had been sent to Ingushetia and North Ossetia to investigate the abductions of ethnic Ingush in North Ossetia.

RIA Novosti reported on September 15 that unknown persons set fire to the apartment of an ethnic Russian family in the city of Malgobek. No one was at home at the time of the incident and thus no one was hurt. On September 14, unidentified attackers fired 3-4 shots from a grenade launcher at a police checkpoint in Nazran’s Nasyr-Kortovsky municipal district on Kavkaz federal highway. The grenades missed their target but fell in the yards of several homes, slightly injuring two children and several adults.

Also on September 14, a powerful explosive device detonated on a road connecting the villages of Yandare and Surkhakhi in Ingushetia’s Nazran district, Interfax reported. No one was hurt in the blast. A source in Ingushetia’s Interior Ministry told Interfax that the bomb exploded near a vehicle carrying Interior Ministry Internal Troops. In a separate incident on September 14, unidentified persons attacked a police station in Nazran with grenade launchers and small arms, Interfax reported.