Briefs

Six Wounded in Kabardino-Balkaria Attack

Six people in the city of Tyrnyauz in the Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria, among them four law-enforcement officers, were injured on June 22 when unidentified gunmen shot up an apartment in the city and tossed a grenade through its window. Newsru.com reported on June 23 that six people who were inside the apartment at the time of the attack were hospitalized with shrapnel wounds. Kavkazky Uzel reported on June 24 that three of the six victims were policemen, one was an officer with the local branch of the federal anti-narcotics service (FSKN) and two were civilians. According to “unofficial” information, a birthday party was going on inside the first-floor apartment at the time of the attack. However, according to the republican FSKN’s press service, the FSKN officer who was in the apartment at the time of the attack had collected information on persons involved in narcotics trafficking and was sharing it with the policemen who were also in the apartment at the time of the attack.

Locusts Swarm Northern Chechnya

Locusts in northern Chechnya are threatening the republic’s agricultural land, the Chechen president’s press service reported on June 24. Itar-Tass quoted the presidential press service as saying that the hardest hit areas were the Shelkov and Naursk districts, where some 65,000 hectares of land were under a “sold wall” of locusts. The press service reported that a total of 85,000 hectares across the entire republic had been infested by the locusts, but that the swarm had thus far affected mainly “wild plants.”