The pro-Kremlin president of a Russian region bordering Chechnya has survived an apparent assassination attempt. Ingushetia's President, Murat Zyazikov, was slightly injured when a car packed with explosives rammed into his motorcade on Monday morning.
A presidential spokesman said it appeared to have been a suicide attack.
| Well, unless the car drove itself... |
Correspondents say Mr Zyazikov, who served in the intelligence services in Chechnya and Ingushetia, is seen as a close ally of President Vladimir Putin. It was not immediately clear who carried out the attack which injured several bodyguards and damaged nearby buildings.
| It's most likely the usual suspects. |
But Mr Zyazikov told Russian Itar-Tass news agency the blast was the work of "forces who wanted to turn Ingushetia into a battleground. The separatists and extremists, whose leaders are known, stand to gain above all from the destabilisation processes."
| Yup, the usual Chechen suspects |
Moscow says it has pacified Chechnya four years into its second campaign, but fighting continues in the rebellious republic. Most of the attacks take place inside Chechnya, but Russian serviceman have also been targeted in Ingushetia. Ingushetia hosts thousands of Chechen refugees who fled the conflict.
| Great, another country I can't pronounce. |
| Ingushetia's apparently where they kept the non-nutballs. When Dzokar first started bumping people off Chechnya was half of the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Region. The Ingush response was something along the lines of "go, then, and don't come back." The refugee camps, as is usually the case, provide a means of infiltrating sad-eyed Bad Guys, who later try to assassinate people. Somehow there're always more corpses near refugee camps than there are elsewhere, starting in Paleostine, going through the Pak-Afghan border, and of course deep into places like Ingushetia and Dagestan. |
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