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U.S. security officials are investigating a recent intelligence report that a group of 25 Chechen terrorists illegally entered the United States from Mexico in July. The Chechen group is suspected of having links to Islamist terrorists seeking to separate the southern enclave of Chechnya from Russia, according to officials familiar with intelligence reports. Members of the group, said to be wearing backpacks, secretly traveled to northern Mexico and crossed into a mountainous part of Arizona that is difficult for U.S. border security agents to monitor, said officials speaking on the condition of anonymity. The intelligence report was supplied to the...

Russian security forces dealt a double blow to the al Qaeda-linked Caucasus Emirate during operations in the southern Russian republics late last week. Emir Magas, the military commander of the Caucasus Emirate, was captured and Yasir Amarat, a wanted terrorist commander from Jordan, was killed during raids by Russia's Federal Security Service, or FSB. On June 9, the FSB captured Emir Magas, whose real name is Ali Taziyev, during a raid in the village of Malgobek in the Republic of Ingushetia. Kavkaz Center, a jihadist website that supports the Caucasus Emirate, confirmed Magas' capture and noted his importance. Magas has...

Polish TV crew in trouble in Russia 02.06.2005 A Polish diplomat from the Moscow Embassy has gone to Ingushetia to investigate the curcumstances of the detention in Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia, of three Polish television journalists. After an 8-hour questioning, they had their video cassettes confiscated and were handed over to the Russian Federation security services. They were accused of filming without permission in the region of troops stationing in North Caucasus.

Vladikavkaz - The lone surviving hostage-taker of the deadly Beslan school siege in the southern Russian republic of North Ossetia told the court on Tuesday that the group would have released hundreds of children if politicians they had requested had arrived to negotiate. Nurpashi Kulayev said: "The commando chief, the colonel, was ready to release 150 children for each of the negotiators if they had come." Kulayev was speaking during his trial in the supreme court of North Ossetia in Vladikavkaz, 20km from Beslan. According to authorities, 1 128 people were taken hostage on September 1 with 330, including 186...

Russian authorities have detained two people on suspicion of being linked to terrorists who held more than 1,000 people hostage in a school in September. Nikolai Shepel, Russia’s deputy prosecutor general and head of the investigation into the September 1 to 3 seizure of the school in Beslan, North Ossetia, said a 16-year-old resident of neighbouring Ingushetia has been detained on charges of possible links to the terrorists. Shepel wouldn’t elaborate, but the daily Gazeta identified the suspect as Marina Korigova, a college student, and said she had been in custody for about two weeks. Investigators said Korigova had had...

The group of hostages has escaped from a building of school in Beslan, the correspondent of RBC informs. In area of school fierce fight proceeds. There is a continuous shooting from different kinds of the weapon, explosions are audible. On the preliminary data, power structures have begun operation on clearing hostages. At the moment of evacuation of victims insurgents have started explosive ustojstva, the schools incorporated in a building, the source in an operative staff informed. Hostages from a building of school deduce and people in the military form bear on hands. On the preliminary data, it is deduced...

MOSCOW (AP) -- Armed men seized a school in the Russian region of North Ossetia Wednesday morning and were in a gun battle with police, news reports said. The region borders with warring Chechnya. The seizure took place on the first day of the Russian school year, when it was likely that a large number of parents had accompanied their children to class. The reports said the school was in the city of Beslan, which is about 10 miles north of Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia. Vladimir Yakovlev, President Vladimir Putin's envoy for the southern region of Russia...