Posted on 11/26/2004 3:32:15 PM PST by knighthawk
ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia - Russian security forces killed an alleged top aide to radical Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev after he put up armed resistance to arrest, the Federal Security Service said Friday.
Akhmed Sambiyev, known as the "White Arab," was killed late Thursday in a confrontation with police and security service officers in a private house in Ingushetia, a southern Russian region bordering on Chechnya, said Yuri Smolyaninov, a spokesman for the Ingush branch of the security service.
Three security force officers were wounded in the operation to capture him in the Ingush city of Nazran, Smolyaninov said.
Earlier, the Ingush Interior Ministry had said an alleged, unidentified militant was killed when he detonated a homemade bomb during an attempt to detain him, and another militant was taken into custody.
Sambiyev, who the ITAR-Tass news agency said was either Syrian or Turkish, was an expert in explosives with close links to international terrorist groups, Smolyaninov said.
ITAR-Tass quoted him as saying that Sambiyev had succeeded Abu Kuteib, an Arab terrorist and Basayev aide who was allegedly killed in July.
Basayev has claimed responsibility for the school seizure and other terrorist attacks in Russia that have killed more than 440 people.
In other developments Friday, a Russian reconnaissance squad killed an alleged militant and arrested two others in an operation in the Chechen capital Grozny, a Russian police official in Chechnya said on condition of anonymity. He said the militants put up resistance by exploding a grenade and wounding two Russian officers, one seriously.
Another alleged militant was killed in a clash between Russian troops and an armed group in a village near the Chechen-Ingush border, Interfax reported. The other group members escaped, it said.
In a separate operation, Chechen security officers freed an abducted Russian serviceman, said Russian Interior Troops spokesman Alexei Polyansky. The soldier was kidnapped Monday from his unit in Grozny. His abductors demanded a $5,000 ransom, Polyansky said.
Chechen President Alu Alkhanov said both federal and local law enforcement structures had been involved in some of the 142 kidnappings that had happened in Chechnya between January and September this year, Interfax reported.
Also Friday, Interior Troops' commander Nikolai Rogozhkin said Russia had no plans to cut down its nearly 23,000-strong contingent in Chechnya in "the foreseeable future." Russian officials have said previously that about 70,000 troops are deployed in Chechnya.
Ping
Well, if he didn't die during the attack he would have suffered a fatal heart attack during interrogation.
how many bullet holes???
Where was Kevin Sites and his camera to prove this "alleged" top aide wasn't really surrendering? /sarc
Yippie! Bye-bye "White Arab"!
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