Rebels Step Up Attacks in Dagestan

Rebels stepped up attacks in Dagestan this past week. Five police officers were killed and nine injured in attacks along the administrative border between Dagestan’s Sergokalinsky and Karabudakhkentsky districts on October 21. One policeman was killed—he was identified as chief Captain Ruslan Muidov, deputy head of the Sergokalinsky police department—and three wounded when gunmen fired on the car in which they were traveling. A police source told RIA Novosti that a group of OMON riot police sent in to help the first group was hit by an explosion, after which gunmen opened fire on them from a nearby woods “As a result of the attack, four servicemen died at the scene, while six sustained serious injuries and were taken to a local hospital,” the source said. Police mounted a search for 15-18 militants who were believed to have been involved in the attack, but the perpetrators were not found. The rebel Kavkaz-Center website described the attack as an ambush of murtads (apostates) carried out by mujahideen.

The following day, October 22, gunmen fired on a car in which Dagestan’s deputy sports minister, Budun Budunov, was traveling in Makhachkala. Budunov was not hurt. Earlier that day, a bomb went off in the path of a traffic police patrol car in Makhachkala, slightly injuring two officers and breaking windows in the Toyota Service building nearby.

On October 23, a bomb that went off in the path of a traffic police patrol car in the city of Khasavyurt injured two police officers, who were hospitalized. According to an item posted on the rebel Kavkaz-Center website that day, the bombing in Khasavyurt was an operation carried out by the Khasavyurt sector of the Dagestani Front of the armed forces of the Caucasus Emirate targeting police murtads (apostates).