Rebel Attacks Kill Dozens in Ingushetia
By REUTERS
Published: June 22, 2004
Filed at 4:35 p.m. ET
NAZRAN, Russia (Reuters) - Suspected Chechen rebels rampaged through southern Russia's Ingushetia region early on Tuesday, mounting an onslaught that killed 57 people and raised new doubt about Moscow's ability to crush separatist violence.
The fighters seized Ingushetia's interior ministry building for several hours and attacked other top security points, prompting President Vladimir Putin to make a lightning trip to the region
``Judging by what is going on here, the federal center is not doing enough to defend the republic,'' Russian television showed Putin telling Ingushi President Murat Zyazikov.
``They must be found and destroyed. Those whom it is possible to take alive must be handed over to the courts,'' he said at a televised Kremlin meeting with top security chiefs.
It was the biggest armed operation by rebels in the southern Russian province -- whose mainly Muslim people are ethnically close to neighboring Chechens -- since war between separatists and Moscow erupted in Chechnya a decade ago.
Chechnya's main pro-independence rebels denied they were behind the attack.
Asked if rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov had planned the attack, his deputy Akhmed Zakayev told Reuters in London: ``No. He did not lead it and he did not plan it.''
Zakayev said the Ingush fighters were led by an Ingush commander named Magomed who had fought alongside Chechens in Chechnya itself under Maskhadov.
Fifty-seven people -- including 47 security and police officials -- were killed in the operation, Tass quoted the region's acting Interior Minister, Beslan Khamkhoyev, as saying. Earlier reports said 25 civilians had been killed.
An interior ministry spokesman said the dead included the acting regional interior minister Abukar Kostoyev, who had been in the building when it was captured. Another 60 people were injured. Two rebel fighters had been killed.
Khamkhoyev said three suspects, of various nationalities, had been detained.
DARING OPERATION
Coming just six weeks after the assassination of Chechen leader Akhmad Kadyrov, Tuesday's daring operation dealt a further blow to Putin's assertion that the tide had turned in Moscow's favor in its nine-year battle with the separatists.
The former spy chief came to power in 2000 by talking tough on the need to wipe out the rebels and sending in more troops.
Putin said he had ordered a permanent regiment of interior and defense ministry troops to be stationed in the region.
The strikes, concentrated in Ingushetia's capital Nazran, led to fierce overnight battles as security forces fought to dislodge the rebels from the ministry.
The rebels launched their offensive at around 10:40 p.m. (2:40 p.m. EDT) Monday night. Tass quoted police as saying a small army of up to 200 guerrillas staged the operation, that began with rebels tricking their way into checkpoints on a main highway.
Using forged documents that identified them as members of anti-crime and special service squads, they commandeered the checkpoints and then gunned down police who answered the alarm, police said, quoted by Tass.
Within an hour and a half they seized the interior ministry building in Nazran. They then raided ministry depots, seizing weapons and destroying those they could not take with them.
Residents cowered in cellars as fierce fighting raged around them for several hours until the rebels left the interior ministry and pulled out.
Footage broadcast by ORT Channel One television showed bodies of combatants and civilians lying in the streets, many of them charred and mutilated from the intense fighting.
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CaptainChewbacca wrote:They broke the Cardinal Rule of war:
Never Invade Russia! You can't Win!
Well, Chechnya is already part of Russia...
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The Chechens are supposed to be freedom fighters seeking to free Chechnya from Russian occupation. It is hard to understand why they would carry out an offensive operation inside Russia.
I have to tell you something everything I wrote above is a lie.
CaptainChewbacca wrote:They broke the Cardinal Rule of war:
Never Invade Russia! You can't Win!
I believe the Mongols would strongly disagree with that assessment. (And the assement that its impossible to successfully invade Russia in the middle or winter.)
Devolution is quite as natural as evolution, and may be just as pleasing, or even a good deal more pleasing, to God. If the average man is made in God's image, then a man such as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly superior to God, and so God may be jealous of him, and eager to see his superiority perish with his bodily frame.
BlkbrryTheGreat wrote:
I believe the Mongols would strongly disagree with that assessment. (And the assement that its impossible to successfully invade Russia in the middle or winter.)
Russia as a nation-state did not exist then, this analogy is completely invalid.
BlkbrryTheGreat wrote:
I believe the Mongols would strongly disagree with that assessment. (And the assement that its impossible to successfully invade Russia in the middle or winter.)
Russia as a nation-state did not exist then, this analogy is completely invalid.
BlkbrryTheGreat wrote:
I believe the Mongols would strongly disagree with that assessment. (And the assement that its impossible to successfully invade Russia in the middle or winter.)
Russia as a nation-state did not exist then, this analogy is completely invalid.
Not really, considering that winter had alot to do with the "you can't successfully invade Russia" idea; and last I checked winter dosen't care about politics.
Devolution is quite as natural as evolution, and may be just as pleasing, or even a good deal more pleasing, to God. If the average man is made in God's image, then a man such as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly superior to God, and so God may be jealous of him, and eager to see his superiority perish with his bodily frame.
BlkbrryTheGreat wrote:
Not really, considering that winter had alot to do with the "you can't successfully invade Russia" idea; and last I checked winter dosen't care about politics.
It has a lot to do with it only if you have a one-track mind.
The main difficulties in invading Russia for western Europeean armies is that those armies are designed for another kind of warfare, the quick and decisive model. The other main difficulty is that invaders always have to watch their backs.
Without other enemies, and the insane Nazis in charge of occupation policy, Germany could have pulled it of twice last century. However anyone powerful enough to actualy contemplating marching east usualy have plenty of other enemies and are also probably more than a bit crazy.
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