Rebel Activity Rebounds in Ingushetia

Security forces in Ingushetia launched a special operation today (April 13) in a portion of the republic’s Sunzha district where a group of militants was reportedly encircled. A group of around ten alleged militants were reportedly blockaded yesterday (April 12) in a wooded area near the Sunzha district settlements of Alkun, Muzhichi, Arshty, Dattykh and Galashki. A source in the republic’s security structure was quoted as saying that security forces fired on the area with mortars (www.ria.ru, www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, April 13).

Earlier, security forces launched a special operation against a group of militants discovered in a wooded area in the mountains on the administrative border between Chechnya and Ingushetia. On April 10, the Kavkazsky Uzel website quoted a source in the Chechen Interior Ministry as saying that the special operation had ended without results and that the rebels had possibly fled to another area. Various Russian news agencies, including Interfax, quoted law-enforcement sources as saying that one policeman was killed and another wounded on April 8 in a shootout in the area between a Chechen Interior Ministry unit and a group of suspected rebels. According to Kavkazsky Uzel, “unofficial sources” say that at least three policemen died in that shootout (www.interfax-russia.ru, April 9; www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, April 10).

In another incident on April 10, an officer with the road patrol of the Ingush police was shot and wounded in the leg after getting in a fight with a group of unidentified people in the Nazran district village of Surkhakhi. The officer, 30-year-old Bashir Tumgoev, was hospitalized (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, April 10).

Separately on April 10, the chairman of the Council of Teips of Ingushetia, Umar Gadaborshev, was murdered in the village of Nesterovskaya. The 59-year-old retired police colonel was shot by an unidentified attacker as he was leaving his home and died in the hospital. Gadaborshev was chosen as a member of the Council of Teips of Ingushetia by Ingushetia’s president, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, and was elected chairman of the body in November 2011. The secretary of Ingushetia’s Security Council, Akhmed Kotiev, told Kavkazsky Uzel that the murder may have been the result of an unresolved feud between two teips – families or clans (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, April 10).

In Dagestan, security forces yesterday (April 12) discovered and destroyed a rebel dugout in Dagestan’s Karabudakhkentsky district three kilometers northwest of the village of Gubden. The dugout was provisioned with food, dishes, gas cylinders, sleeping bags and flashlights, among other items. About a kilometer from the dugout, security forces found buried in the ground two boxes containing several camouflage uniforms, civilian clothes, medicines and toilet articles (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, April 12).

On April 11, an unidentified attacker shot and killed a serviceman in the republic’s capital Makhachkala. The gunman attacked the serviceman, a corporal with the 102nd Brigade of the Russian Interior Ministry’s Internal Troops, as he was traveling in a “marshrutka” minibus in the republic’s capital Makhachkala, shooting him twice in the head. The serviceman was in uniform at the time of the attack, which took place at 3:30 p.m., local time, in front of other marshrutka passengers (www.riadagestan.ru, April 11).

Separately on April 11, Gadzhimurad Abdullaev, an aide to the prosecutor of the Leninsky district of Makhachkala, was shot and killed by a group of five people in black uniforms and masks who broke into his family’s home in the republican capital. The raiders tied up family members and robbed the home before shooting Abdullaev (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, April 12).

On April 10, someone planted an improvised explosive device on the windowsill of the home of Omar Omarov, chairman of the Khasavyurt city court, in Makhachkala. The IED was detonated, wounding his wife and one-year-old grandson (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, April 11).

Also on April 10, an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) detonated near the home of a 44-year-old resident of the village of Agachaul in Dagestan’s Karabudakhkentsky district. No one was hurt in the incident (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, April 10).

In Stavropol Krai, four suspected rebels were killed on April 9 when police stopped a car on the Achikulak-Budennovsk highway in the region’s Neftekumsk district and those inside allegedly opened fire. Two IEDs were reportedly found in the car, and the Federal Security Service (FSB) reported it had received information that rebels were planning to carry out terrorist acts during upcoming religious and May holidays. On April 10, another five alleged rebels were killed during a counter-terrorist operation in the city of Mineralnye Vody, also in Stavropol Krai. Security forces reportedly found a large quantity of weapons and ammunition during that operation (www.itar-tass.com, April 10).

In Karachaevo-Cherkessia, a suspect managed to seize the sidearm and shoot and kill an FSB officer on April 9. The detainee also shot and wounded a policeman and an FSB border guard who were among those who detained him. The suspect, who was shot and killed, was later identified as Soltan Gappoev, a resident of the village of Kardonikskoi in Karachaevo-Cherkessia’s Zelenchuksky district. According to the authorities, he was a member of a rebel group who had criminal record (www.newsru.com, April 10; www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, April 11).

Meanwhile, authorities in North Ossetia arrested a group of arms traffickers who were allegedly providing members of “illegal armed formations” in the North Caucasus with arms procured overseas. According to the National Anti-Terrorist Committee, the operation against the arms traffickers was carried out jointly by the FSB and Russian Interior Ministry over April 11-12 (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, April 12).