BRIEFS

–BOMBINGS AND SHOOTOUT IN INGUSHETIA

A suspected Islamic militant was wounded in a shootout with police on November 15 in Nazran, Ingushetia, pravda.ru reported. An Interior Minister spokesman, Roman Shchekotin, said that the suspect, Isa Ozdoev, started firing on police as they tried to arrest him. Also on November 15, a bomb blast slightly damaged a children’s toy store in Nazran. News reports said a passenger truck carrying border guards was the target of the explosion. No one was hurt in the incident. Kavkazky Uzel reported on November 16 that another bombing had taken place in Ingushetia the previous day. According to the website, the blast, which had the force of two kilograms of TNT, took place along the Kavkaz highway in the Nazran district near the memorial to victims of political repression. No one was hurt in the incident.

–AMOUNT OF AMMO USED IN CHECHNYA REACHES WWII LEVELS

In an interview published in Vremya novostei on November 9, Igor Avseenko, head of the Federal Agency for Industry’s department for the ammunition and special chemical products industry, touched on the issue of how much ammunition is used in Chechnya. The interviewer, military correspondent Nikolai Poroskov, asked about reports that “mountains” of aging Soviet-era shells remain in military warehouses. Avseenko answered: “Of course they remain. But there is a very large expenditure of ammunition in hot spots. In Chechnya, for example, it is the same as in 1944 during the Great Patriotic War. But new, effective types are less than a fifth of the total quantity of ammunition.”