Militants attack Caucasus police and government buildings

Militants launched simultaneous attacks on police and government buildings in one of the main cities in Russia’s turbulent Caucasus region today, sparking battles involving heavy-arms fire and explosions that forced the evacuation of schools and left bodies in the streets.

The attacks in Nalchik, capital of the predominantly-Muslim republic of Kabardino-Balkariya, involved about 100 insurgents, a local Interior Ministry official said. About 10 militants were killed, he said.

ITAR-Tass cited Nalchik’s city ambulance service as saying there were “many casualties” and that its 31 ambulances were constantly answering emergency calls.

Kabardino-Balkariya, along with other southern Russian regions, has seen a rise in Islamic extremist movements and violence targeting police, soldiers and other law enforcement officials in recent years linked to the festering decade-old guerrilla conflict in nearby breakaway Chechnya.

Police have twice launched attacks on suspected Islamic militants in the city this year, killing 10.

The Interior Ministry officer said fighting began after police received an anonymous telephoned tip that about 10 armed militants had entered the suburb of Belaya Rechka, and police and security forces launched an operation to capture them.

The Interfax news agency cited an unidentified law-enforcement official as saying the battle was sparked by the detention of a group of adherents to the radical Wahhabi sect of Islam, and that their fellow believers were trying to free them.

The battles began early today in a suburb of the city and spread to several districts in the centre by midmorning.

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

They also attacked the city’s military commissariat and raided a hunting store, apparently to obtain weapons, the oficer said.

The regional office of the Emergency Situations Ministry said fighting was under way at the airport. Interfax said security forces had repelled an attack there. All flights were cancelled.

The militants also attacked the regional headquarters of the Russian prison system, the Emergency Situation Ministry’s press office said.

At least three alleged militants were killed.

An Associated Press reporter saw three bodies in one street in the city centre near government buildings: one in police uniform, one man with a gun and one in civilian clothes.

A teacher from School No.5, who gave only his first name, Spartak, said children had been evacuated from the building, located close to a police station and an anti-terrorism office at the centre of the attacks. Black smoke billowed from the building as panic-stricken parents searched for their children in the school yard.

Shooting continued an hour after the attacks reportedly began and windows and doors in the local office of the Federal Security Service were smashed. Snipers crouched on the building’s roof and soldiers in masks and camouflage were in the streets, where two armoured personnel carriers were parked.

A crowd of bystanders stood about 100 yards away from the building, and there appeared to be no effort to cordon off the site of fighting to prevent more casualties.

Federal forces blocked off much of the city of 235,000, but intense shooting from automatic rifles and grenade-launchers could be heard in the centre.

Nalchik is about 60 miles north-west of Beslan, where Chechen rebels raided a school in September 2004, taking hundreds of hostages. More than 330 people, half of them children, died in the raid which ended in explosions and gunfire after three days.

In December, gunmen raided the regional branch of the federal Drug Control Agency in Nalchik, killing four employees, looting an arsenal and setting the office ablaze.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered security forces to deal more severely with suspected Islamic militants in the south. Law-enforcement agencies have launched a series of sweeps targeting suspected extremists outside Chechnya.