ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia, 26 August 2005 — Two bombs exploded on a roadside in the mostly Muslim republic bordering Chechnya yesterday, wounding its prime minister in an apparent assassination attempt, officials said. The explosions in Ingushetia — which officials said also killed a driver and wounded two others — were the latest sign of growing violence across the restive North Caucasus.
Ingushetia region Prime Minister Ibragim Malsagov was hospitalized after the attack in the city of Nazran, but his life was not in danger, Kremlin regional envoy Fyodor Shcherbakov said.
Malsagov, the region’s second highest-ranking official, was wounded in the hand and the leg, said spokesman Nikolai Ivashkevich of the southern regional branch of the Emergency Situations Ministry.
Malsagov’s driver was killed and two others were injured, he said, but did not give further details about the other victims.
The two explosives, placed about 10-15 meters apart, detonated within 10 seconds of each other near one of the city’s outdoor markets as the prime minister’s motorcade passed, the region’s Interior Minister Beslan Khamkhoyev said, according to Interfax news agency. Russian television networks showed footage of what appeared to be Malsagov’s black Mercedes, its rear window a maze of cracked glass, and of a deep crater by the roadside.
Nazran is the main city in the Ingushetia region, which has suffered frequent spillover violence from neighboring Chechnya to the east, as well as attacks by its own militants and criminal gangs.
The top prosecutor for southern Russia, Deputy Prosecutor General Nikolai Shepel, said in televised comments that the attack seemed to have “the same signature” as other terrorist attacks that have struck the North Caucasus, adding: “I mean the international organizations that unfortunately are present in the south of Russia.”
Russian authorities are eager to link their fight against militants in the North Caucasus with the international struggle against terror, and often point to alleged international involvement in attacks in the region. Government critics say flawed Kremlin ethnic policy and corruption among regional leaders are major causes of the violence.
Last week, Nazran police chief Dzhabrail Kostoyev was wounded when unidentified assailants detonated a radio-controlled land mine as his car was passing. The republic’s police and security forces were also targeted in a devastating assault by militants in June 2004, in which some 90 people were killed. Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev claimed responsibility for that attack and for the hostage crisis that killed more than 330 people last September at a school in Beslan, North Ossetia, which borders both Chechnya and Ingushetia.
