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| Caucasus |
| Terrorist base destroyed in Chechnya |
| 2003-11-26 |
| A special operation to destroy the remainder of the armed formation routed by the army commandos near Serzhen-Yurt settlement on the day before is going on in the Shali district of Chechnya, spokesman for the Regional Operations Staff (ROSH) for controlling the counterterrorist operation in the Northern Caucasus Colonel Ilya Shabalkin said. "Additional elements of the Interior and Defence Ministries were sent to the above-said area to pursue the remainder of the armed formation, as well as other smaller armed formations hiding in this locality, and five more bandits were destroyed in the course of the ambushes and pursuit," Shabalkin said. According to him, a lot of firearms and ammunition was taken in the places of fighting, and measures are being taken to identify the killed bandits’ bodies. "It is possible that odious figures from-among the leaders of illegal armed formations and foreign mercenaries are among them," the ROSH spokesman noted. According to the ROSH information, on the day before the Defence Ministry commandos found a base of militants in the course of the search operation. As a result of fighting, the reconnaissance men killed seventeen bandits. There are no reports of the federal forces’ losses. Bands subordinated to armed separatists’ ringleaders Shamil Basayev and Abu al-Valid operate in this region. As noted before, Abu al-Valid = Abu Walid, yet another member of the now-infamous al-Ghamdi tribe. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |