Police, Engineers Attacked in Ingushetia

Against the backdrop of growing unrest over the death of a six-year-old boy during a security sweep, violence against law-enforcement personnel in Ingushetia continues. Itar-Tass reported on November 15 that the chief of the transport police department of the Nazran railway station, Salman Arapkhanov, died after being shot by three unidentified gunmen in the garden of his house in the village of Ordzhonikidzevskaya, in Ingushetia’s Sunzhensky district, the previous evening. On November 8, two policemen were attacked and seriously wounded by unknown gunmen in the city of Karabulak.

On the evening on November 13, unidentified attackers threw a grenade and fired into the home of a resident of Nazran’s Nasyr-Kort municipal district. The grenade failed to detonate and no one was hurt in the attack. On November 12, unknown gunmen fired on a car carrying three Russian communications engineers in Nasyr-Kort, killing one and seriously wounding the other two. As Ingushetiya.ru noted, the engineers were repairing a mobile-phone transmission tower belonging to the Megafon company, which is owned by the brother of Belan Khamchiev, who is heading the list of candidates that the pro-Kremlin United Russia party is running in Ingushetia for the December 2 State Duma elections.