Police Attacked in Dagestan and Kabardino-Balkaria

A fourth person died today (April 30) as the result of a suicide bombing near a traffic police checkpoint in Dagestan’s Kazbeksky district on April 29. Two policemen were killed along with the suicide bomber in the blast, which also wounded 17 people and destroyed ten cars. RIA Novosti quoted a police spokesman as saying that six of those wounded in the bombing were police officers and 11 were civilians, including a child. The agency also quoted a Dagestani interior ministry source as saying that in stopping the suicide bomber’s car, the police personnel at the checkpoint had managed to prevent a bombing in the city of Khasavyurt, where the car and its improvised explosive device (IED) were apparently heading (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, April 30; RIA Novosti April 29). A March 31 suicide bombing in the Dagestani city of Kizlyar killed 12 people, including nine police officers (EDM, April 1).

A militant that allegedly helped the two female suicide bombers who blew themselves up on the Moscow metro on March 29 was reportedly killed on April 26 along with an associate in a shootout with police. The shootout occurred on the Khasavyurt-Mutsalaul highway, 200 meters from the Kavkaz federal highway, on the outskirts of the village of Toturbiikal in Dagestan’s Khasavyurt district. The suspect, identified as Akmed Rabadanov, a resident of the village of Novyy Kostek in Dagestan’s Khasavyurt district, had reportedly been videotaped by surveillance cameras in the Moscow metro accompanying the female suicide bombers just before they detonated their bombs, killing 40 people. On April 27, Dagestani President, Magomedsalam Magomedov, said that more than 150 militants have been killed and more than 110 captured in the republic over the last 16 months (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, April 27).

On April 26, an explosive detonated on the roof of an abandoned building on the outskirts of Khasavyurt. No one was hurt in the incident. On April 25, a bomb went off near the door of a shop in the village of Karlanyurt in the Khasavyurt district. No one was hurt in that blast. The Kavkazsky Uzel website quoted a Khasavyurt policeman, Arslan Kushiev, as saying that the village of Karlanyurt had been operating according to “dry” law –that is, one banning alcohol– for several months, with the backing of all its inhabitants, but that the owner of the shop that was bombed had continued selling alcoholic beverages despite “the decision of the jamaat” prohibiting alcohol (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, April 26-27). On April 24, unknown attackers in Khasavyurt hurled a grenade at the home of an employee of the city’s House of Culture. No one was hurt in the attack, but the grenade explosion broke windows in the home (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, April 24).

On April 21, a Cossack ataman, or chieftain, was shot dead in the village of Krasny Voskhod in Dagestan’s Kizlyar district. The ataman was also head of the district’s gas maintenance service. On April 20, two blasts took place in Dagestan’s capital Makhachkala. One of the bombs targeted the car of Mirza Etinbekov, the son of Kamil Etinbekov, a Dagestani Federal Security Service (FSB) colonel killed in 2004. Mirza Etinbekov was wounded in the bombing (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, April 21).

Two policemen and two local residents were wounded in a bomb blast in Nalchik, the capital of Kabardino-Balkaria, on April 29. The bombing took place near the “Caravan” shop in the city late in the evening, seriously wounding the two policemen, who were in their patrol car at the time of the blast (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, April 30). On April 28, unknown attackers fired on a police patrol car near the village of Kuba-Taba in Kabardino-Balkaria’s Baksan district. One of the officers was killed and the other was taken to the hospital with gunshot wounds. On April 27, security forces discovered a hidden arms cache in Kabaradino-Balkaria’s Chereks district that included an F-1 grenade, 500 7.62 mm rifle rounds and 500 grams of TNT (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, April 28). On April 24, unidentified attackers fired on the home of a policeman in the city of Chegem in Kabardino-Balkaria, wounding the officer (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, April 25).

In Ingushetia, On April 29, security forces defused an IED discovered in the home of a local resident in the city of Karabulak. The bomb consisted of two rounds from a grenade launcher, a RGD-5 grenade and several gun cartridges. On April 27, security forces killed a suspected militant who they said resisted capture in the village of Ordhonikidzevskaya in Ingushetia’s Sunzha district (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, April 30).

On April 28, Russia’s Prosecutor-General, Yuri Chaika, reported that 83 percent of the terrorist attacks carried out in Russia in 2009 took place in the North Caucasus. Chaika said the situation in the region remains problematic and that the effectiveness of the work of the law-enforcement bodies in the North Caucasus in combating “organized crime” has “dropped significantly” (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, April 29).