Gunmen Attack Parliament in Chechnya

[PAKFA]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/world/europe/20chechen.html?_r=1&hp

MOSCOW—Gunmen burst into the Parliament of Chechnya in southern Russia on Tuesday morning, killing several people in a shootout, according to Russian news reports.

Unnamed law enforcement sources speaking to Russian news media said that three or four men entered the building in Grozny and opened fire close to the office of the Parliament’s speaker, Dujuvakha Adurakhmanov. Reports said that Mr. Adurakhmanov was still alive, but that at least four people had been killed.

The gunmen have reportedly begun taking hostages. There were also reports that the Agriculture Ministry was under attack.

Russian forces fought two wars in Chechnya against a fierce separatist movement that has evolved over the last decade into an Islamist insurgency responsible for almost daily attacks against law enforcement and government officials in the region.

Though violence is common in Chechnya and throughout the southern Russian territory known as the North Caucasus, Tuesday’s attack against the Parliament building was particularly brazen.

The attack echoes another raid by militants in August on Tsenteroi, the home village of Chechnya’s president, Ramzan A. Kadyrov, and could be an indication that insurgents are stepping up their campaign to target the region’s top leaders.

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[GUNNER]

Attack On Chechan Parliament


GROZNY, Russia, Oct 19, 2010 - Militants stormed parliament in Russia's conflict-torn Chechnya Tuesday, holding deputies and gunning down guards, before being killed in a bloody standoff with security forces.

The group of up to four militants broke into the parliament building in the Chechen capital Grozny early in the morning, killing four people and sparking fears of a major hostage crisis before security forces moved in.

Officials said that all the militants were killed by the security forces, with reports adding that some had been shot dead while others had killed themselves by detonating suicide charges.

"We heard shots in the courtyard and we knew they were trying to take us hostage. We managed to take refuge on the third floor where we stayed until the end of the operation," spokesman for the Chechen parliament, Zelim Yakhikhanov, told AFP.

Chechnya's leader Ramzan Kadyrov told the Interfax news agency that Chechen security forces staged an intense 20-minute operation to kill the militants and free the parliament deputies and employees from the building.

"All deputies are alive and were taken from the territory of the parliament building to safety," Kadyrov said.

Three interior ministry security guards and one civilian employee of the parliament were killed after militants stormed the parliament building, a spokesman for the interior ministry told AFP.

Russian news agency reports said that two militants blew themselves up in suicide blasts and the others were killed in an exchange of fire with security forces.

According to the investigative committee of prosecutors, 17 people were wounded in the raid.

Interfax said parliamentary speaker Dukuvakha Abdurakhmanov had been evacuated from the parliament building in an armoured vehicle and had not been hurt.

Russian Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev -- by coincidence on a trip to Grozny -- described the operation by the security forces to free the deputies as a success and claimed Chechnya was "stable and safe".

"As always, they (the militants) failed. They were intercepted by interior ministry troops," he said at a televised meeting at the local interior ministry.

"Situations like today occur very rarely. Here (in Chechnya) it is stable and safe. The militant underground has been practically decapitated," he said.

President Dmitry Medvedev is attending a summit in France and a Kremlin official said he had been kept informed in a telephone conversation with the head of the FSB security service Alexander Bortnikov, Nurgaliyev and Kadyrov.

The special operation was personally led by Kadyrov, Interfax quoted a security source as saying.

The Kremlin has been fighting separatist insurgents in the Northern Caucasus since after the collapse of the Soviet Union and waged a war in 1994-1996 against separatist rebels in Chechnya.

However, after a second war broke out in Chechnya in 1999, the rebellion's inspiration moved towards Islam with the aim of imposing an Islamic state in the region.

Russia in April 2009 ended a decade-long "counter-terror" operation in Chechnya, a move seen by some analysts as premature.

Chechnya has in the past years seen a relative improvement in security under its strongman leader, Kadyrov, although attacks remain common.

But Kadyrov, himself an ex-rebel, has been heavily criticised for his tough tactics by rights groups, who accuse him of torture and using his own personal forces to crack down on critics.