Attacks Reported in Kabardino-Balkaria, Chechnya, Dagestan and Karachaevo-Cherkessia

Investigators in Kabardino-Balkaria said today (November 5) that two hunters found dead yesterday (November 4) may have died at the hands of members of “illegal armed formations.” The bodies of two residents of the city of Nalchik –69-year-old Vycheslav Kiriloyuk and 64-year-old Valdislav Revazov– were found in a car in a wooded area 180 meters away from the Chegem 2-Lechinkai road and not far from the village of Lechinkai. Investigators say the hunters had first been beaten and then shot, and that the attackers stole a hunting rifle and a cell phone that belonged to Revazov. In November 2007, nine hunters were killed in a wooded area on the outskirts of Lechinkai when, according to the authorities, they accidently came upon a group of militants hiding in the area. The authorities said the hunters were first tortured and then killed (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, November 5).

On November 4, two suspected militants were killed in an abandoned mine in the town of Tyrnyauz in Kabardino-Balkaria, where a special operation has been going on for the last two weeks following a shootout between militants hiding in the mine and police. A policeman and a militant were killed and another policeman wounded in the earlier shootout in the mine (www.newsru.com, November 4).

A woman was severely wounded on November 3 in a bomb blast that took place on a federal highway in Kabardino-Balkaria’s Elbrus district. The improvised explosive device (IED) detonated on the Azau-Prokhladny highway near the village of Verkhny Baksan as a car carrying members of OMON special task police unit from Volgograd was passing by. The woman, a resident of Kabardino-Balkaria’s Baksan district, was also passing by in a car when the bomb went off (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, www.newsru.com, November 3).

On November 2, unidentified attackers murdered Yusup Taukenov, the financial director of a company, the Prielbrus Cable Railway. He was called outside of his house around 9:00 p.m., local time, where he was shot and killed (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, November 3).

On November 1, a district police inspector was shot and killed in the village of Islamei in Kabardino-Balkaria’s Baksan district. Authorities said the incident took place near the policeman’s house. That same day, police discovered two improvised explosive devices near an apartment building in Nalchik, the republic’s capital. Nearby apartment buildings were evacuated and the devices were destroyed in a controlled explosion (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, November 1).

On October 31, two gunmen in masks shot an interior ministry internal troops senior lieutenant and a local resident in the village of Shalushka in Kabardino-Balkaria’s district. The interior ministry lieutenant was killed and the local resident was wounded in the attack (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, Interfax, November 1).

Similar incidents were reported in other parts of the North Caucasus this past week. Residents of the Chechen capital Grozny reported hearing a loud explosion yesterday (November 4). Authorities said today (November 5) that several powerful IED’s had been discovered and were destroyed in a controlled explosion. One of the bombs was found near the offices of the local affiliate of Rosneft, the Russian state-owned oil company, where two explosive devices had been discovered on October 31. A law-enforcement source told Kavkazsky Uzel that the bomb found yesterday near the Rosneft affiliate’s offices contained two kilograms of plastic explosives and metal shards to serve as shrapnel. The source said that a weapons cache that included an IED was discovered last week in the same area, and that the cache had belonged to a militant killed at the end of last August, Khamzat Shemilev (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, November 5).

On November 3, a suspected militant was killed in a shootout with police in the center of Grozny. Two policemen, a senior lieutenant and a junior sergeant, were wounded in the shootout. The slain alleged militant was identified as Islam Ektumaev, a 28-year-old resident of the village of Assinovskaya (www.newsru.com, November 4).

On November 2, police discovered an arms cache on the outskirts of the village of Zagryazhsky in Grozny’s Staropromyslovsky district. A Chechen interior ministry source told Kavkazsky Uzel that the arms cache was discovered on the basis of information from a detained alleged rebel accomplice and that it included an anti-tank grenade launcher, two kilograms of plastic explosives and other IED components, including two electronic detonators and a mobile phone (www.newsru.com, November 3).

On November 1, ten policemen were wounded during a special operation against an alleged militant in Grozny’s Oktyabrsky district. Two of the policemen were shot while the other eight received contusions from a blast caused by a grenade hurled at them by the rebel. The rebel, who was killed in the shootout, was identified as Rashid Chantagov, a 24-year-old resident of Chechnya’s Achkhoi-Martan district (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, November 1).

In Dagestan, security forces on November 4 discovered a militant dugout in the republic’s Kayakentsky district, a rebel weapons cache in the republic’s Kazbeksky district and a homemade bomb in the home of a local resident in the Tabasaransky district (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, November 5).  That same day, a bomb went off near a gas distribution plant in Dagestan’s Kizilyurt district. No one was injured in the incident. On November 3, an arms cache that included a 152 mm artillery shell was discovered near the village of Botashyurt in Dagestan’s Khasavyurt district (Interfax, November 4). The imam of a mosque in the Dagestani city of Khasasvyurt, Basir Salakhgeryev, was found with a gunshot wound to the head on November 1. He died on the way to the hospital (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, November 2).  Also on November 1, security forces in Dagestan killed a militant they identified as Murad Shashaev, the 31-year-old leader of the Kaspiisk militant group (Interfax, November 1).

In Karachaevo-Cherkessia, unidentified attackers burned down three Christian churches in the Karachaevsk municipal district –two in the city of Karachaevsk and one in the village of Ordzhonikidzevskaya (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, November 2).