Relatives demand victims' bodies after Russian militant attack

HUNDREDS of grieving relatives gathered outside the prosecutors' office in the southern Russian city of Nalchik yesterday, demanding the release of the bodies of relatives killed during a raid by alleged Islamic extremists.

Many feared they would never see their relatives' bodies. Under Russian law, terrorists' bodies are not returned to their families and some claimed their relatives had been unfairly identified as participants in the raid.

"Give back the bodies of our children so that we can bury them," said a petition the crowd gave prosecutors.

The demand came two days after militants attacked police and government buildings in Nalchik, sparking fighting that killed at least 130 people, including 94 alleged attackers, according to official tallies.

Asya Zhekamukhova, 21, said she wanted to collect the body of her 26-year-old husband, Vadim Zhekamukhov, a driver for a veterinary clinic. When the shooting started, he rushed to a nursery school to pick up his nephew and was killed, she said.

"He was not a Wahhabi. He despised them," Ms Zhekamukhova said, using the usual term for Islamic extremists in Russia. "He never carried any guns, but when we found his body there was a gun lying nearby."

Deputy regional prosecutor Asker Masayev asked the crowd to go home and wait until today because investigators were still working to separate the bodies of attackers from other victims.

Nalchik is the capital of the Kabardino-Balkariya region, which has been long rattled by spillover violence from nearby Chechnya, as well as local criminals. Earlier this year, Nalchik police twice launched assaults on alleged Islamic militants holed up in apartments.

Some Muslims accuse law enforcement authorities of persecuting innocent people who worship outside officially sanctioned mosques, falsely branding them militants and planting compromising evidence such as drugs or weapons.

Thursday's assaults were the first such brazen raids in the region, with scores of young men launching a daylight attack, apparently seeking to seize weapons and ammunition.

"All the militants were already in Nalchik as 'peaceful citizens,'" Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov was quoted as saying by the ITAR-Tass news agency, apparently denying Chechen rebel claims of involvement.

"No one had arrived in Nalchik from the outside or brought weapons there," said Mr Ivanov.