- MOSCOW: A provincial leader says that that more than 400 police and other law enforcement agents have been killed by militants over the past five years in just one of Russia's restive southern provinces.
Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, the president of the province of Ingushetia west of Chechnya, said at a rally Saturday that more than 3,000 civilians have been wounded in attacks by militants in the region over the same period. Yevkurov's statement was posted on his administration's official Web site Sunday. Yevkurov himself was badly wounded by a suicide bombing of his convoy in June 2009.
Ingushetia and other provinces in Russia's restive North Caucasus region have been plagued by violence stemming from two separatist wars in neighboring Chechnya. Rights groups say that police abuses against civilians have fueled violence.
