Ingushetia attacks killed more than 90

More than 90 people were killed and 120 wounded in the attacks in the Russian republic of Ingushetia, the regional government said today.

Sixty-seven of the dead were members of law enforcement agencies.

The regional branch of Russia’s Federal Security Service – successor to the KGB – received information about the movements of an armed group in cars about 30 minutes before the start of attacks late Monday night, said agency official Andrei Konin.

“But we did not expect such an extent – simultaneous attacks on 15 sites,” he added.

In a lightning visit to Ingushetia, Russian President Vladimir Putin said a regiment of Interior Ministry forces would be stationed permanently there, raising the Kremlin’s troop commitment to the troubled Caucasus region.

The co-ordinated assaults by heavily armed fighters on police and border guards facilities in the main Ingush city of Nazran and several smaller settlements was a graphic demonstration of Russian forces’ vulnerability to guerrilla fighters.

Ingush police said that many of their number were killed in along the road as militants stopped official cars at checkpoints and inspected identification papers.

For the four hours that the fighting raged, the militants – whom Ingush police estimated to number up to 200 – controlled police checkpoints along much of the 35 mile Ingush stretch of the Trans-Caucasus highway, the main route used by the Russian military in the region.

Thousands of Russian troops have streamed into Ingushetia to search for the attackers, who were believed to have escaped into the thick woods along the Chechen border, over the mountains into Georgia, or back to their home towns in Ingushetia itself.

Putin said the search for the attackers must go on “as long as necessary".