Insurgency Related Violence Reported In Dagestan, Ingushetia and Kabardino-Balkaria

Russian Deputy Prosecutor-General, Ivan Sydoruk, said on December 8 that the number of terrorist acts committed in the North Caucasus Federal District rose 100 percent in comparison to last year. According to Sydoruk, 14 terrorist acts have been carried out in the district this year. He was addressing a meeting on the work of the North Caucasus Federal District’s law enforcement bodies in countering the flow of illegal weapons and in uncovering attacks on law enforcement staff and servicemen.

Sydoruk also reported that more than 30 counter-terrorist operations were conducted in the North Caucasus Federal District this year, during which more than 300 militants were “neutralized,” with 16 rebel leaders killed and 58 terrorist acts averted. During the same period, 1,665 guns, 91,846 rounds of ammunition, more than 1,200 kilograms of explosives and more than 110 explosive devices were seized in the region.

Last month, President Dmitry Medvedev said that the situation in the North Caucasus remained tense, and he dismissed as “lies” claims made by leaders in the region that the situation there had improved. According to the Newsru.com website, more than 200 policeman and Federal Security Service (FSB) officers have been killed in the North Caucasus this year and more than 500 wounded (www.newsru.com, December 8).

There have been a number of attacks on police and shootouts between security forces and rebels reported in Dagestan since the start of December. Police in the city of Kaspiisk today (December 10) detained two suspected militants who were allegedly in possession of bomb-making materials. Yesterday (December 9), gunmen attacked a police post at the entrance to the city of Khasavyurt. According to some reports, one policeman was wounded in the attack; according to others, two were wounded. Following the attack, police discovered an improvised explosive device (IED) around 100 meters from the police post that had come under fire. The IED, which contained explosives equal in force to three kilograms of TNT, was defused. In another incident yesterday (December 9), a policeman was wounded when gunmen fired on a police post in the city of Kaspiisk (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, December 9-10).

On December 6, one militant was killed in a shootout between a group of militants and security forces on the outskirts of the village of Kvanada in Dagestan’s Tsumadinsky district. The slain militant was identified as Akhmed Abdulkerimov, a suspect in the bombing that killed the head of the Tsumadinsky district FSB branch in September (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, December 6).

On December 5, the National Anti-Terrorism Committee (NAK) reported that six militants were killed in a shootout with security forces at a farm in the village of Kirov-Aul in Dagestan’s Kizilyurt district. An OMON special task policeman and a nine-year-old child also died in the shootout. According to the NAK, a local insurgent leader, Yusup Magomedov, was among the six militants killed (Rosbalt, December 5).

The following day, sources in Dagestan’s Investigative Committee were quoted as saying that three policemen had been wounded in the shootout in Kirov-Aul. On the evening of December 5, an officer with Dagestani interior ministry’s tax crimes department was shot by a young gunman in a café in the city of Khasavyurt. The shooter escaped in a white VAZ automobile and the officer died of his wounds on the way to the hospital (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, December 6). Also on December 5, the Dagestani FSB reported that an IED filled with explosives equivalent to 8 kilograms of TNT and metal shards was discovered in Makhachkala and defused (Interfax, December 5).

On December 3, the vice president of Dagestan’s judo federation, Dzhabrail Barkalaev, was shot to death in the republic’s capital. The shooting took place at a sports complex located in a park in Makhachkala. On December 2, unidentified attackers fired on a police unit on the outskirts of Makhachkala. No one was hurt in the incident (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, December 3).

In Ingushetia, four suspected militants were killed on December 7 in a special operation conducted by FSB and interior ministry personnel in the village of Arshty in the republic’s Sunzha district (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, December 7).

In Kabardino-Balkaria, a policeman was injured on December 5 when an IED detonated as a three-man police patrol was passing by in the republic’s capital, Nalchik (Interfax, December 5).

Meanwhile, police sources in Moscow were quoted today (December 10) as saying that a 22-year-old woman (named, according to one source, Gella Sultanovna Barkinkhoeva) had been detained in Moscow after traveling from Karabulak, Ingushetia. According to sources, she may have been planning to commit a terrorist act in the Russian capital (www.newsru.com, December 10).