District Official Assassinated in Ingushetia

Kavkazky Uzel, citing Radio Liberty, reported on July 4 that an observation tower of the border department of the Federal Security Service (FSB) branch in Ingushetia was shot up. Nobody was hurt in the attack in Nazran, the republic’s largest city. RIA Novosti reported on July 3 that one person was wounded when a car came under automatic weapons fire at the Ekazhevsky roundabout outside of Nazran. A source in Ingushetia’s Interior Ministry said the victim in that attack, a former policeman named Sapraliev, was seriously wounded, and that the attackers made off with his vehicle.

An attack in the Ingush town of Karabulak on July 3 killed Khavazh Daurbekov, initially described in press reports as Karabulak’s deputy head but later identified as the deputy head of Nazran’s Leninsky district administration. Daurbekov was reportedly shot and killed not far from his house in Karabulak by attackers who fired from a car. As RIA Novosti reported on July 3, Karabulak, located northeast of Nazran, was in the media spotlight two weeks ago, when five to seven assailants fired at least 20 rocket-propelled grenades at a special-purpose police base (Chechnya Weekly, June 21).

RIA Novosti reported on June 29 that a man was killed in a bomb explosion in Karabulak. A source in the Karabulak branch of the Interior Ministry told the news agency that according to preliminary data, the blast was the equivalent of 500 grams of TNT, and that the ministry was investigating “whether the deceased had anything to do with the explosion,” which happened near the town’s outpatient clinic. About a half an hour before the explosion, a UAZ car carrying special purpose police troops in Karabulak came under fire from automatic weapons. None of the servicemen was hurt in that attack.

Interfax reported on June 28 that a border detachment was fired on in Nazran but that no one was hurt. “The detachment came under fire in a drive-by attack,” a law-enforcement source told the news agency, adding that the servicemen returned fire but that the assailants managed to escape.

The Regnum news agency reported on June 29 that a group of around 100 Ingush women blocked the Caucasus Federal Highway near the village of Ekazhevo in Ingushetia’s Nazran district to protest the actions of security service officers who, the women alleged, had repeatedly abducted young Ingush men accused of various crimes. One of the protesters, Madina Ausheva, told the news agency that a group of unknown masked men claiming to be with the Prosecutor-General’s Office had burst into her home in the village of Surkhakhi on June 27 and tried to detain her husband, Khalid Aushev. However, village residents stood up for him and brought him to the republic’s Interior Ministry on their own. Madina Ausheva said her husband was detained on unconfirmed charges that his car was spotted during a militant assault in Ingushetia.