No Letup in Shootings and Bombings in Ingushetia
Publication: North Caucasus Weekly Volume: 9 Issue: 3
Two servicemen were killed and three wounded in Ingushetia on January 23 when the car in which they were traveling came under fire, Kavkazky Uzel reported. The incident took place as the servicemen were returning to their post in the village of Troitskaya. The attackers managed to escape. On January 22, gunmen ambushed a minibus in Nazran, killing one soldier and injuring three army officers—a captain, major and lieutenant-colonel, Reuters reported. In a separate incident in Nazran that same day, a car carrying explosives blew up killing the driver. Also on January 22, unidentified attackers wounded the deputy head of an Ingush pre-trial detention center, Interfax reported. “Captain Magomed Torshkhoyev was driving to work from his home in his VAZ-2115 vehicle,” an Ingush law-enforcement agency source told the news agency. “Unknown people opened gunfire on the policeman’s car from a passing-by vehicle. The police office was wounded in the leg and was hospitalized.”
RIA Novosti reported on January 18 that a gun and grenade attack in Ingushetia the night of January 17 targeted the republic’s prime minister, Ibragim Malsagov. “Preliminary reports indicate that the home of the republic’s prime minister, Ibragim Malsagov, was attacked,” an unnamed security official told the news agency, adding that no one was killed or injured but that the house in the capital, Nazran, was severely damaged. Ingushetia’s Interior Ministry denied the attack took place, while Malsagov’s office confirmed an incident but said there was no attack on his house and that “the shooting took place a long way from it.”
Meanwhile, the independent Ingushetiya.ru website reported that Maksharip Aushev, an organizer of the opposition demonstration set to take place in Nazran on January 26, was summoned by the republican prosecutor’s office, where he was interrogated and threatened by republican prosecutor Yury Turygin and Interior Minister Musa Medov. According to Ingushetiya.ru, Aushev was later released from a local police station after hundreds of protesters gathered outside demanding his release (see Andrei Smirnov’s article below).
