More than 60 people were killed on Thursday, including about 50 militants, after gunmen launched attacks on Russian government installations in the southern city of Nalchik, the region’s top official was quoted by Itar-Tass news agency as saying.
Arsen Kanokov, the president of the Kalbardino-Balkario province where Nalchik is located, said the attacks were carried out by about 150 armed militants, according to the report.
The dead also included about a dozen local residents, Kanokov said, without specifying whether they were members of local law-enforcement bodies or merely innocent bystanders.
He said about 50 people wounded in the attacks were receiving treatment in local hospitals.
The simultaneous attacks in Nalchik, near breakaway Chechnya, sparked fierce street battles, officials said.
The attacks centred on the local offices of the Russian FSB federal security service and the interior ministry, while Interfax news agency said the militants tried to attack the Nalchik airport, but that effort was thwarted.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks in the capital of the republic of Kabardino-Balkaria, which bore all the hallmarks of an operation by Chechen rebels who have vowed to continue attacks on Russian federal security installations in the volatile North Caucacus region where Chechnya is located.
One report described the gunmen as ”religious extremists”, while Interfax quoted an official as saying the attacks were in reprisal for the recent arrest in Nalchik of a group of Islamic radicals, whom the attackers tried to free from the facility where they were being held.
The attacks in Nalchik were the most spectacular since the Beslan school hostage seizure last year, but came amid a steady stream of smaller-scale incidents that occur on an almost daily basis in Chechnya and adjacent provinces in the volatile north Caucasus region.
Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his special envoy for the North Caucasus, Dmitry Kozak, to Nalchik to get first-hand reports on the attack, news agencies said.
School evacuated
In an image reminiscent of last year’s Beslan school hostage siege, children were seen fleeing from a primary-school building while gunfire erupted nearby and smoke hung over the area.
One girl who ran out of the school said armed men were firing inside the building, but security officials later made clear that armed police had entered the school to ensure its emergency evacuation due to its close proximity to the site of one of the buildings under attack.
Russian media said gun battles occurred at a number of locations in Nalchik and the city centre was saturated with security forces, while gunfire could be heard nearby.
Police cars equipped with loudspeakers circulated in parts of the city advising local residents to evacuate the area.
A local journalist quoted by RIA-Novosti news agency said the gunmen were dressed in civilian clothing and took advantage of panic to blend in with the local population, hiding weapons under their clothes as they changed locations, before opening fire again on security forces.
In addition to the FSB and interior ministry buildings, the gunmen attacked at least two police stations and, according to RIA-Novosti, attacked a private store that sells weapons.
Similar attacks
Large teams of Chechen rebels have carried out similar attacks in other cities in the region in the past, with one of their key tactical objectives apparently being the acquisition of weapons from security personnel.
In June last year, hundreds of pro-Chechen gunmen — led by rebel warlord Shamil Basayev in person — carried out simultaneous attacks in several parts of the Russian Caucasus province of Ingushetia, leaving 88 people dead, nearly all of them Russian law-enforcement personnel.
Russian troops and pro-Russian Chechen security forces have been fighting a war in Chechnya for the past six years, the second war there in a decade.
Russian officials insist the conflict is winding down and the situation normalising, but Chechen rebels have vowed to keep up attacks in Chechnya and elsewhere in Russia until Russian forces leave the republic. — AFP
