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Caucasus Corpse Count
A Russian soldier and three policemen have been killed in a shooting in the capital, according to Russian media reports. The soldier and the three officers were on patrol in Grozny's Leninsky district on Saturday evening and had stopped two cars to check the passengers' documents, the Interfax news agency reported on Sunday, quoting Maj-Gen Ilya Shabalkin, a Russian government spokesman in Chechnya. A passenger in one of the cars gave an officer what appeared to be a fake Interior Ministry identification card, Shabalkin said. When the officer returned to his car to call headquarters, armed men in one of the cars opened fire, killing the soldier and three officers, he said. The dead included a Federal Security Service official and two Chechen Interior Ministry officers, Shabalkin told Interfax and the ITAR-Tass news agency. A search for the men is under way, Shabalkin said, adding that authorities suspect one of the men to be Mashugov, who allegedly works with Chechen separatist leader Shamil Basayev.In a separate incident, a senior police official was killed in the neighbouring Russian region of Dagestan, authorities said on Sunday. Two armed men on Saturday night fired on Magomed Gadzhimagomedov, who headed a regional branch of the Interior Ministry's criminal investigation division, outside the entrance to his home in Buinaksk, said Abdul Musayev, a spokesman for Dagestan's Interior Ministry. Gadzhimagomedov, 48, was returning home from his office in Buinaksk, about 30km southwest of the regional capital, Makhachkala, Musayev said. He had worked for the police department for 20 years.  Shabalkin also said on Saturday a government reconnaissance patrol clashed with about 20 separatist fighters near the village of Surkhakhi in neighbouring Ingushetia. At least three fighters were killed, Shabalkin told Interfax. Shabalkin said the group left behind military equipment and ammunition. Posted by: Dan Darling 2004-09-27 |
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