Insurgency-Related Violence Reported in Ingushetia, Dagestan and Kabardino-Balkaria

A car being driven by a Federal Security Service (FSB) officer blew up today (March 30) in Ingushetia’s main city, Nazran. The explosion wounded the officer, identified as Ruslan Yandiev, and his wife, who was traveling in the car with him and reportedly also works for the Ingush FSB branch. Yandiev was critically wounded in the blast and placed in intensive care in the hospital, while the condition of his wife, who was also hospitalized, was described as satisfactory. The incident took place on Nazran’s Mutlaiev Street not far from the offices of the Ingush branch of the Federal Migration Service. An Ingush law-enforcement source told the Kavkazsky Uzel website that a bomb apparently attached to the bottom of the car detonated when the vehicle was at a stop light (https://www.ria.ru/incidents/20120330/609741250.html; www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, March 30).

Earlier this week, on March 28, the Fabrichnyi market in central Nazran was evacuated after an anonymous caller warned police that a car loaded with explosives was parked there. However, no explosive-laden vehicle was found. On March 24, a roadside bomb detonated in the Ingush city of Malgobek as a convoy of police cars was passing by. No one was hurt in the blast (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, March 28). On March 22, a roadside bomb explosion wounded the acting director of Ingushetia’s branch of the Social Insurance Fund, Alikhan Tsechoev, and his driver (EDM, March 23).

In Dagestan, three servicemen were wounded on March 28 when gunmen fired on a mobile unit of Russian Interior Ministry Internal Troops along the administrative border of the republic’s Tsumadinsky and Botlikhsky districts. One of the servicemen was hospitalized in grave condition, while the other two were only slightly wounded (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, March 28).

On March 27, unidentified attackers fired on a car being driven by a police officer in the Dagestan’s capital Makhachkala. The officer was hospitalized with gunshot wounds. Investigators found 18 spent 7.62 mm cartridges at the scene of the attack. The Lada Priora car, in which the attackers reportedly escaped, was later found on fire elsewhere in the city (www.regions.ru, March 28).

On March 25, someone fired at a police officer guarding the building of the traffic police headquarters in Makhachkala. No one was hurt in the incident. That same day, a shop in the village of Zhdanovo in Dagestan’s Kizlyar district was partially destroyed in an apparent bomb blast. The Kavkazsky Uzel website noted that shops selling alcoholic beverage are frequently the targets of attacks in Dagestan and elsewhere in the North Caucasus (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, March 25). Later on March 25, someone hurled a Molotov cocktail through the window of the building of a tax inspectorate in the village of Tarumovka in Dagestan’s Tarumovsky district. The ensuing fire burned part of one of the building’s offices. No one was hurt in the incident (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, March 26).

On March 24, four suspected rebels blockaded in a home in the suburbs of Makhachkala surrendered to police after negotiations. The four were described as two young men and two young women not older than 25 who had been hiding out in the home along with a large quantity of ammunition, including several grenades. Also on March 24, a suspected rebel, identified as Gazhi Isadibirov, surrendered to police in the Dagestani capital after he was given personal guarantees of safety by the head of Dagestan, Magomedsalam Magomedov. The head of the Dagestani government commission for adapting militants to civilian life, Rizvan Kurbanov, participated in the negotiations with Isadibirov, who was holed up in an apartment with his wife and infant child (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, March 25).

Also on March 24, gunmen attacked a police post in the Dagestani village of Dzhemikent on the Kavkaz federal highway. One attacker was killed while three others managed to escape. None of the police officers manning the post was hurt in the attack (Interfax, March 24).

On March 23, three suspected militants were killed in a special operation in the village of Oktyabrskoe in Dagestan’s Khasavyurt district. The three were identified as Magomed Musaev, Murtuz Zakarigaev and Adulla Dzhamalov. According to the Russian National Anti-Terrorist Committee, the three were involved in an attack on a polling station on March 4, the day that Russia’s presidential election took place. Three policemen and one suspected militant died in that incident (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, March 25).

Meanwhile, in Kabardino-Balkaria, two suspected militants were killed in the republican capital Nalchik yesterday (March 29). The incident occurred when police attempted to stop a car and those inside allegedly opened fire (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, March 29).

On March 27, a man identified as Alim Zankishiev, aka Ubaida, reportedly the leader of Kabardino-Balkaria’smilitants, was killed in a special operation in Nalchik. The committee said unsuccessful attempts were made to convince Zankishiev to surrender, including by his wife, a Muslim resident of Karachaevo-Cherkessia who was arrested on March 4 and who was brought to the scene of the special operation and spoke to him using a megaphone. Zankishiev was accused of killing nine park rangers and hunters in the village of Lechinkai in 2007 and the murder of the head of the anti-organized crime unit of Kabardino-Balkaria’s Interior Ministry, Anatoly Kyarov, in 2008. According to Kavkazsky Uzel, Caucasus Emirate leader Doku Umarov named Zankishiev leader of Kabardino-Balkaria’s rebels in 2011 following the death of his predecessor, Asker Dzhappuev (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, March 27).

On March 25, bomb disposal experts defused a large improvised explosive device on the Kavkaz federal highway in Kabardino-Balkaria, 16 kilometers outside the city of Chegem. The device was equal to 20 kilograms of TNT in explosive force (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, March 25).

On March 25, the commander of a mobile police platoon in Kabardino-Balkaria’s Baksan district was shot to death while driving near his home in the village of Dugulubgei (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, March 25).