Russian forces search for militants after attacks kill 108 people

RUSSIAN soldiers and police searched the city of Nalchik yesterday in the hunt for alleged Islamic militants who launched a series of fierce attacks that left at least 108 people dead.

Authorities claimed all pockets of active fighting had been put down a day after the attacks on the city began, but there was concern fighters could have melted into the civilian population to regroup.

President Vladimir Putin promised that Russia would put down all attacks "hard and consistently," but the bloodshed underlined how violence in the restive Caucasus region is spreading.

As officials announced successful operations against rebels, it became clear militants had taken more than 15 hostages.

Soldiers shot grenades through the barred window of a gift shop in the town centre and security forces used an armoured personnel carrier to smash through the shop wall to save two hostages. Deputy Prosecutor, General Vladimir Kolesnikov, said three militants were killed there.

Deputy Interior Minister Andrei Novikov said four police officers gunmen had taken with them in a getaway attempt were rescued unharmed and the militants killed.

The head of the regional government, Gennady Gubin, said all rebel resistance in the southern Russian city had been suppressed, all hostages freed and the city was being searched for rebels.

Interfax later reported that 12 militants had been killed in the office of the Russian prison administration. Other news agencies reported nine or 10 militants were killed there.

Nine hostages were freed from the building earlier yesterday. Three police officers held there were killed, the RIA-Novosti news agency said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said: "It is bad that such bandit raids are still possible here (in Russia). It's a great tragedy that we are sustaining losses among law enforcement officers and peaceful civilians."

The rebels' strategy has been to sow instability across the south, capitalising on the turbulent Caucasus region's grinding poverty to swell recruits, buying off corrupt officials and unleashing terrorist bombings and attacks against police.

The president of Kabardino-Balkariya - of which Nalchik is capital - Arsen Kanokov, said close to 150 militants were involved in the attack, most of them local residents.

"The population's low income and unemployment create the soil for religious extremists and other destructive forces to conduct an ideological war against us," he said.

At least 108 people, including 72 attackers, had been killed in the fighting, various sources said. Novikov said 24 law enforcement officers were killed and 51 wounded.

The regional department of the Emergency Situations Ministry said 18 civilians had been killed and 139 wounded, said ministry duty officer Sergei Petrov.

Chechen rebels claimed involvement in the near-simultaneous attacks on police and security facilities that terrified the city of 235,000 and left corpses lying on the streets. But Novikov told reporters that two-thirds of the militants, who were mostly aged 20-30, were local residents, the rest being from other Caucasus republics.

He said the alleged leader of the attack, Ilyas Gorchkhanov, had been killed. He also said a large quantity of weapons, ammunition and explosives had been seized during the past two days around the republic.

Kabardino-Balkariya is near Chechnya, where rebels have been fighting Russian forces for most of the past decade. Dagestan, another Caucasus republic, has suffered a sharp rise in violence this year.