63 dead as Islamic rebels attack police

SCORES of Islamic militants yesterday launched simultaneous attacks on police and government buildings in Nalchik in Russia’s turbulent Caucasus region, sparking battles that killed at least 63 people.

Chechen rebels claimed responsibility for the attacks, which forced the evacuation of schools and left corpses on the streets of Nalchik, capital of the republic of Kabardino-Balkariya.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who came to power in 2000 by talking tough on Chechnya, ordered security forces to throw a ring of steel round the city of 235,000, and kill any gunman who resist.

Deputy Interior Minister Alexander Chekalin said: “The president gave an instruction that not one gunman should be allowed to leave the town, and those who are armed and putting up resistance must be wiped out.”

The Chechen rebels’ decade-long struggle against Russia, originally a separatist movement, has increasingly melded with Islamic extremism and spread to encompass the whole Russian Caucasus region.

If the battles once shaped up between Russian troops and Chechen rebels, the picture has since grown far more complicated. Police and security forces have fought pitched battles with militants across the region, often engaging in urban warfare, and the rebels have employed terrorist methods including suicide bombings and the seizure of more than 1,000 hostages last year in a school in Beslann, 60 miles southeast of Nalchik.

Extremism is spreading despite harsh anti-terrorist methods, from targeted killings of rebel leaders to rewards for information to the demolition of houses where suspected rebels have found refuge.

Estimates of the number of militants involved yesterday ranged from 60 to 300. The attacks began with heavy arms fire and explosions, and sporadic shooting continued for four hours.

Of the dead, 50 were militants and at least 10 were police officers, Chekalin said. Local Health Ministry spokesman Stepan Kuskov said at least three civilians were killed, and 84 people wounded. The ITAR-Tass news agency quoted a doctor at a city hospital as saying 15 civilians’ bodies had been brought in.

Putin’s envoy to the region, Dmitry Kozak, said the attackers were holding hostages at a police station, but did not specify if they were civilians or officers. A spokeswoman for the republic’s Interior Ministry, Marina Kyasova, said police on the upper floors of the building were battling attackers on the ground floor, and denied hostages had been taken.

A police officer said a truckload of soldiers to reinforce the city overturned, injuring 18 servicemen.

Chekalin said the fighting began after a police operation to capture about 10 militants in a Nalchik suburb, and that the attacks were aimed at diverting police. All 10 suspected militants were killed, he said.

Gunmen launched simultaneous attacks against three police stations, the city’s airport and the regional headquarters of the Interior Ministry and Federal Security Service, police said.

The militants also attacked the regional headquarters of the Russian prison system and a border guards’ office.