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Russian security forces foil 'another Beslan' in republic near Chechnya
 Russian security forces foiled a mass hostage-taking by pro-Chechen rebels in southern Russia on the scale of the bloody Beslan school hostage tragedy, media reported. A law enforcement source in Dagestan, which neighbours war-torn breakaway Chechnya, told the ITAR-TASS news agency that five militants cornered Saturday in an hours-long siege in the republic planned to seize a large number of hostages that day. The head of the FSB security service in Dagestan, Nikolai Gryaznov, said the siege and a separate assault on rebels hiding in a house in nearby Kaspiysk -- in which a total of four Russian troops died -- had averted a major terror act. "The bandits destroyed in Kaspiysk and Makhachkala were preparing a terrorist act similar to Beslan," the Interfax news agency quoted Gryaznov as saying. "We made use of intelligence information, carried out dozens of raids and searches. This allowed us to corner the criminal group preparing terrorist acts," he said.A member of the Russian parliament from Dagestan told journalists that the militants had planned to seize a school. "It was the same plan as Beslan, they were preparing to seize a school," lawmaker Gadzhi Makachev told the NTV channel. In a gunbattle lasting more than 15 hours on Saturday, using heavy weaponry, special forces fought the five militants who had holed up in a house near the Dagestani capital Makhachkala. A spokesman for the Dagestani interior ministry, Colonel Abdulmanap Musayev, told ITAR-TASS that a base used by the gunmen had been discovered with large quantities of weapons and bomb-making equipment. The siege near Makhachkala began when a police patrol came across the armed rebels in the street early Saturday as they left to carry out the terror act, ITAR-TASS reported. The gang were forced to barricade themselves in a house, taking hostage a family living there, but later released them. NTV showed pictures of special forces with armoured vehicles firing anti-tank rockets at a burning building, which was levelled to the ground by a tank. The five gunmen, who had taken refuge in the basement, stopped returning fire by late evening Saturday, and officials said the bodies could be buried under the rubble. On Sunday, special forces accompanied by bomb disposal experts and sniffer dogs looking for booby-trapped bombs searched the ruins of the two-storey building. The Dagestan interior ministry spokesman said that during the operation in Kaspiysk two men had been arrested and a Dagestan rebel leader had been killed. Posted by: tipper 2005-01-17 |
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