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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Helicopters Bomb Rebel Positions in RussiaÂ’s Southern Region |
| 2006-06-14 |
| Russian helicopters on Wednesday bombed a wooded area in the restive southern region of Ingushetia where security forces believed up to 10 Chechnyan militants were hiding, Associated Press news agency reported. The air strikes came amidst two months of rebel violence in the region bordering on Chechnya, in which 10 people including two high-ranking police officials and three small children have been killed. The military operation Wednesday, outside the village of Ali-Yurt, about 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the region’s largest city, Nazran, involved units of the Ingush Interior Ministry, the Federal Security Service and the Russian army, said Nazir Yevloyev, the regional Interior Ministry spokesman. After the bombing, the troops fanned out through the woods to search for the militants. “The operation to detain members of an illegal armed group began at 7 a.m. (3 a.m. GMT), and special forces are combing the area and police have cut off escape routes,” the local interior ministry spokesman told RIA Novosti. In the nearby region of Kabardino-Balkariya, meanwhile, Deputy Russian Interior Minister Yuri Kokov said Tuesday that the special services’ attempts to cut off terrorist financing were ineffective, and accused them of purposely underestimating the number of militant supporters in the region. “The reason for the weak work in preventing planned terrorist attacks is the terrible corruption among the employees of the military, security and law enforcement structures,” Kokov told a conference of Interior Ministry officers. The Kabardino-Balkariya regional department of the Federal Security Service announced Tuesday, that seven automatic rifles recovered from the bodies of five militants killed in the October attack on Nalchik, had been stolen from military warehouses in a June 2004 rebel raid in Ingushetia, for which radical Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev has claimed responsibility. Officials have announced such linkages to shore up their argument that Islamic-inspired rebels across Russia’s south are coordinating their actions. |
| Posted by:Steve |