NAZRAN, Russia, 24 June 2004 — The death toll from a rebel incursion into a republic neighboring Russia’s separatist Chechnya climbed to almost 100 yesterday as police scoured the Caucasus for fighters who carried out the brazen attack.
As a shaken Ingushetia began three days of mourning, the republic’s new acting interior minister — appointed after his predecessor was killed by the militants — said police had arrested five suspects.
Three of them, detained in the largest town Nazran, “have already started to talk,” while two others, wounded, were not in a condition to be interrogated, the acting minister, Beslan Khamkhoyev, said.
Between 200 and 300 fighters simultaneously struck three towns in Ingushetia, striking at police stations, government buildings and checkpoints with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades, and laying to waste Russian claims that Moscow has asserted its control over the region.
The Ingush Emergencies Ministry told RIA Novosti that 95 people have been confirmed killed — most of them security personnel, including the region’s interior minister, as well several dozen civilians. The rebels have only two confirmed casualties.
The attacks also claimed the life of a local United Nations worker and the UN said it was unable to predict the strikes.
“There was a continuation of incidents that have been going on for some time (in Ingushetia), but nothing to suggest a movement from Chechnya into Ingushetia that we saw happen,” said a senior UN official in Moscow who oversees security issues in the region. “The UN international staff has temporarily relocated to Moscow from Ingushetia,” he told AFP.
Following Tuesday’s attacks Russian President Vladimir Putin, who later in the day made a lightning visit to Ingushetia’s capital Magas, vowed to “destroy” the guerrillas.
But the attacks were a potent reminder that, despite Putin’s repeated statements that the war he launched against Chechen separatists nearly five years ago was over and won, the conflict continues to simmer. The media, which for the large part toe the Kremlin line, was unusually critical of Putin policies.
“There is a Caucasus war on,” the Kommersant business daily gravely announced in a banner headline. “The fighters took control of Ingushetia for several hours.” Dozens of injured civilians, including children, and policemen fought for their lives in hospitals.
