…BOMBINGS IN GUDERMES…

Recent developments in Chechnya’s second city, Gudermes, appeared to bear out Magodmadov’s interpretation of the situation. On June 19, three powerful car bombs exploded, virtually simultaneously, at the buildings of the pro-Moscow Chechen Supreme Court, the temporary headquarters of the regular police, and the headquarters of the special anticrime police. Three persons, including two policemen, were reported to have died in the blasts while thirty-seven were injured, thirteen of them seriously. Eleven of the badly wounded had to be transferred by helicopter to the main military hospital at Khankala outside of Djohar (Grozny) (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, June 21). Incensed over these blasts, the pro-Moscow chief of administration of Chechnya, Akhmad Kadyrov, complained that “in Chechnya the rebels are ruling as they did before.” He demanded that the heads of law enforcement bodies in Gudermes be taken to task for permitting the explosions to occur (Gazeta.ru, June 22). After Russian forces, in reprisal for the bombings, had conducted numerous sweeps and taken a number of Chechens into custody, over 450 civilians, most of them women and children, blocked the Rostov-Baku federal highway in Chechnya, demanding that their relatives, who had been detained under suspicion of organizing the blasts, be released. The situation calmed down only when the protestors were addressed by the pro-Moscow prosecutor of Chechnya, Viktor Dakhnov (Ekho Moskvy radio, 22 June).