SLEPTSOVSK, Russia, 28 December 2002 — A pair of suspected Chechen militants yesterday blew up the pro-Russian government headquarters in Grozny in a bold daytime assault that killed 46 people and wounded more than 100.
The attack, which makes a mockery of the Kremlin’s claims that peace is being established in the war-torn republic, was the worst blow to Russian forces inside Chechnya since Chechen fighters shot down a military helicopter at a base near Grozny in August, killing 120 people.
Russian television showed scenes of bloodied and panic-stricken people staggering from the recently-rebuilt four-story administration building in central Grozny, shortly after two powerful blasts reduced it to smoldering ruins. “This was a terrorist act of major scale,” Vladimir Kravchenko, Chechnya’s civilian prosecutor, said. “There is a huge number of victims.”
Witnesses said two vehicles, a large truck and a minivan, broke through three security cordons during afternoon lunch break and detonated their bombs almost simultaneously at different points outside the structure. Russian security officials said the blast equalled at least one ton of TNT.
As many as 250 people may have been around the building at the time, including Chechen and Russian government workers, visitors, and military forces manning the heavily-guarded perimeter.
A senior Russian Emergency Ministry official said only five people had been recovered alive from the wreck as night fell on the war-ravaged city.
He added that doctors — already under severe strain, operating on a shoe-string budget and lacking basic medicine and equipment — were tending to the wounded by candlelight because the affected area of Grozny had no electricity.
“They are performing surgery with the help of light from candles,” said Deputy Emergencies Minister Gennady Korotkin, adding that over 100 people had suffered injuries in the blasts.
The republic’s Kremlin-appointed interim leader, Akhmad Kadyrov, returned urgently to Grozny from Moscow, where he was holding consultations with Russian leaders on Chechnya’s purported “peace process”.
Kadyrov, who is the Kremlin’s candidate for planned Chechen presidential elections next year, was quick to blame Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov for the blast. But Russian security officials said Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, who has broken with Maskhadov, is more likely to be behind the act. A Chechen Internet site, Kavkaz Center, said an unnamed Chechen field commander had called to claim responsibility for the attack “by Chechen martyrs.” (The Independent)
