Russian security forces storm last rebel holdouts

Security forces today freed seven hostages held by alleged Islamic extremists in a police station and a store, trying to clear the remaining rebels who simultaneously attacked police and government buildings across the southern Russian town of Nalchik yesterday.

Chechen rebels claimed responsibility for the offensive in Nalchik, the capital of the mostly Muslim republic of Kabardino-Balkariya, as a new front opened in the Kremlin’s decade-old battle against Islamic insurgents.

The rebels’ struggle against Russia, originally a separatist movement, increasingly has melded with Islamic extremism in the past decade and fanned out beyond Chechnya’s borders to encompass the entire Caucasus region.

Rounds of heavy weapons fire could be heard about every 20 minutes from the souvenir store at the centre of Nalchik this morning. NTV television reported that an armoured personnel carrier had been used to ram a wall in the store.

Two people believed to be the hostages were taken away in an ambulance, and a traffic policeman who did not give his name said three rebels had been killed. Zaur Makhsiyev, who said his 20-year-old sister Leyla had been inside the store, said she was uninjured, but was suffering the after-effects of an unspecified gas presumably used to incapacitate the militants.

Russian Deputy Prosecutor General Vladimir Kolesnikov said five police officers had been freed from a precinct station where they had been held by militants, and that eight militants had been killed there. Seventeen rebels were detained, the RIA-Novosti news agency quoted Russian Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev as saying.

Officials said at least 85 people were killed yesterday, including 61 attackers, and Nalchik hospital officials said 103 people were being treated for injuries, according to the ITAR-Tass news agency.

Lyuba Dolgova, 50, said her niece Leyla was a clerk in the souvenir store and had been held hostage since 9am yesterday. The rebels gave Leyla their mobile phone, and she called her mother and begged for negotiations. Lyuba Dolgova said, however, that there had been no talks.

“Why aren’t they negotiating with them? They want to talk!” Dolgova said in anguish, as she stood about 200 yards from the store this morning, watching the raid.

However, Nurgaliyev said overnight that the rebels in the store had refused to talk, and NTV reported that its crew had witnessed negotiators at one of the buildings where rebels had holed up.

Outside the city, in the suburb of Khasanya, rebels shelled a police car this morning, killing two riot police officers.

Blodied bodies from yesterday’s fighting still lay in the streets today. A man’s body lay near the entrance to police station No.2 and the regional anti-terrorist centre, where most of the windows had been blown out and even tramway lines outside had been brought down.

Across the street sprawled seven more bodies, most with horrific head injuries. Heavily armed police poked and kicked at the bodies, presumably those of militants, all dressed in tracksuits and running shoes.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, beleaguered by attacks that have killed hundreds of civilians and underscored his failure to bring the turbulent Caucasus under control, ordered a total blockade of Nalchik to prevent militants from slipping out and ordered security forces to shoot any armed resisters.

ITAR-Tass said some rebels tried to escape the city in a van but crashed into a tree and were surrounded and killed. RIA-Novosti said there had been seven militants and an unknown number of hostages in the vehicle. The hostages were rescued, it said.

After the heavy fighting that began yesterday morning and lasted about six hours eased, Deputy Interior Minister Andrei Novikov said 61 militants were killed, some from Kabardino-Balkariya and some from other republics in the Russian Caucasus. Russian and regional officials said 12 civilians and 12 police officers were killed.

Estimates of the number of militants involved ranged from 60 to 300, and Interfax quoted an aide to the president of Kabardino-Balkariya as saying late yesterday that 17 had been detained.

The region has suffered growing violence apparently connected to Islamic extremists and the Chechen rebels’ fight against Russian forces, which has devastated Chechnya and destabilised the entire Russian Caucasus since the early 1990s.

Police and security forces have fought battles with militants across the region, 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 Beslan, about 60 miles south-east of Nalchik.

The Kavkaz-Centre website, seen as a voice for rebels loyal to Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, said it had received a message claiming responsibility for Thursday’s attack on behalf of the Caucasus Front. It said the group is part of the Chechen rebel forces and includes Yarmuk, an alleged militant Islamic group based in Kabardino-Balkariya.

The strategy of launching simultaneous attacks on police facilities was similar to last year’s siege in another Caucasus republic, Ingushetia, in which 92 people died and police armouries were looted.

Basayev claimed responsibility for those attacks and the Beslan raid.

Deputy Interior Minister Alexander Chekalin said yesterday’s fighting began after police tried to capture about 10 militants in a Nalchik suburb, and that the attacks were aimed at diverting police. All 10 suspects were killed, he said.

Gunmen attacked three police stations, the city’s airport and regional headquarters of the Interior Ministry and Federal Security Service, military commissariat and the regional headquarters of Russia’s prison system.