Posted on 10/13/2005 2:50:46 AM PDT by Dog
Gun battles raged in a town in Russia's turbulent Caucasus region after about 150 armed men, described as "religious extremists", staged lightning raids in which security forces killed 50 of the attackers.
Emergency services quoted by Itar-Tass news agency reported many civilian casualties after a morning of mayhem in Nalchik, main city of the Muslim Kabardino-Balkaria region, which is near rebel Chechnya.
Moscow radio said the dead included 20 members of the security forces while another 40 people were being treated for wounds.
Itar-Tass said Russian forces had killed 50 of the 150 gunmen who attacked the town. The agency quoted regional leader Arsen Kanokov as saying that 12 local residents were killed.
Interfax said fighting was still going on at one police building.
Regional prosecutor Yuri Ketov said the armed group had launched attacks on interior ministry buildings and regional FSB state security headquarters in Nalchik, a town of about 280,000 people.
Advertisement Advertisement"We have brought in extra interior ministry forces and armoured vehicles. Defence ministry troops have sealed off areas where operations are underway to disarm and eliminate the attackers," Ketov was quoted as saying by Tass.
"These were meticulously planned and synchronised attacks," a police source was quoted as saying by Tass which described the attackers as "religious extremists".
The attacks bore the hallmarks of an operation by pro-Chechen militants who have been fighting for Chechnya independence since the early 1990s, and posed a new challenge to President Vladimir Putin's hardline policy in the region.
Kabardino-Balkaria is a Muslim region in the Caucasus that borders the North Ossetia province where Chechen militants attacked a school in the town of Beslan in September 2004, resulting in the deaths of 331 people, half of them children.
"Fighting is going on everywhere. The attackers are trying to seize cars and burst their way out of the town," an unnamed military source was quoted as saying by Interfax at the height of the fighting.
"I just woke up when an explosion went off. I could see buildings were on fire. Buildings in the centre are burning,," a local man, who did not wish to be named, told Reuters by telephone.
"I've heard grenades, machine guns, heavy machine guns," he said.
The armed group attacked police buildings, Russian army units based in the region and a gun store in simultaneous raids.
Tass quoted police as saying the small army of attackers had operated in 10 mobile groups, targeting five or six strategic points.
An attempt to seize the regional airport was beaten off, agencies said.
Though security forces said the attacks had been repelled by late morning, the fact that special forces and armoured cars had been brought in suggested they saw a capacity for continuing violence in the hours to come.
In North Ossetia, scene of the Beslan school bloodbath, security forces were put on high alert.
Tass, quoting an emergency services source, said there had been "numerous civilian casualties" and more than 30 ambulances were being used to ferry the wounded to hospital.
Chechen separatist leader Abdul-Khalid Sadulayev has tried to set up what he calls a "Caucasus front" since he took over the leadership of the movement in March, and said attacks in other Muslim regions would be coordinated with those by his own forces.
The attack was reminiscent of an operation in June 2004 when pro-Chechen militants attacked police buildings in Nazran and effectively took control of Ingushetia - near to Kabardino-Balkaria - for several hours.
About 60 people, many of them police, were killed in that attack.
"At the present time fighting is going on across practically the whole of the territory of Nalchik. Forces are carrying out operations to liquidate the fighters," Interfax quoted an emergencies ministry official as saying at one point.
At the height of the fighting, automatic firing resounded around the town and smoke rose from one of the main police buildings under attack.
Children were evacuated from a school nearby, the agency said.REUTERS Reut 09:26 10-13-05
© 2005 AAP
Seems like Putin is in a bit of a jam.
Pull this...another freeper posted it already.
Any bets on what religion of death and destruction this might be? I'd wager every dime I have that they ain't Christians
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