Russian police seal off parts of town in search of militants

Police and security forces have sealed off parts of the southern Russian town of Nalchik where shooting erupted today amid a search for suspected militants.

News agencies reported that a suspected participant in last week’s rebel attacks was killed after resisting police.

Local television today urged city residents not to leave their homes if possible, and the local schools administration advised parents to take their children home from schools.

Shooting was heard in the suburb of Dubki, where the city’s main morgue is located and where security forces were conducting a sweep for suspected rebels, said Luiza Orazayeva, an activist with the Memorial rights organisation.

An Associated Press reporter also heard gunfire on the south-western edge of town and in another district, near a police precinct.

Police cordoned off streets close to the precinct, and allowed neither cars nor pedestrians to enter the zone. Armoured personnel carriers were parked in the streets, and there was a strong smell of smoke, though the source was unclear.

Alleged Islamic extremists conducted a co-ordinated series of attacks on police and other government buildings in Nalchik on Thursday, and 137 people were killed in the fighting.

Russian news agencies reported that police killed a man early today when he allegedly put up resistance during a document check.

The ITAR-Tass news agency quoted an unnamed source in the regional Interior Ministry as saying that the suspect was killed after he refused policemen’s demands to stop and tried to take a Kalashnikov rifle from under his jacket.

The suspect had taken part in last week’s attacks, the Interfax news agency quoted Interior Ministry spokeswoman Marina Kyasova as saying. She said he had spent the last few days in a forest outside town and tried to sneak home overnight.

Two other men who resisted managed to escape, Interfax reported, but ITAR-Tass quoted the regional Interior Ministry as saying only one man was involved in the confrontation.

Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, the purported author of modern Russia’s most horrifying terrorist attacks, claimed he was behind last week’s attacks in Nalchik, according to a statement posted on a Chechen rebel-connected website.

Basayev said the attacks were carried out by militants affiliated with the Chechen rebels, but that Chechen fighters were not involved, indicating an increasingly organised effort to set up militant cells throughout the region that take direction from Basayev.