Rebels stage suicide attack on Chechen parliament

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Rebels stage suicide attack on Chechen parliament

Chechen special security units control the area neighbouring the site of a suicide bomber attack near the parliament in Grozny, October 19, 2010.

A special security unit officer talks to a woman as he guards the area neighbouring the site of a suicide bomb attack near the parliament in Grozny, October 19, 2010.

GROZNY, Russia | Tue Oct 19, 2010 11:57am BST

GROZNY, Russia (Reuters) - Islamist rebels killed at least four people on Tuesday as they tried to seize Chechnya's parliament in a brazen suicide attack that showed Russia has failed to quell insurgency on its southern flank. Three rebels burst into the parliament compound in the Chechen capital of Grozny at 0845 local time (5:45 a.m. British time) as deputies arrived for work and began the attack, which lasted until government forces stormed the building.

One blew himself up and two others went on the rampage inside, spraying bullets around as they screamed "Allahu Akbar" ("God is Greatest"), a Reuters source who spoke to a witness at the parliament building said. The remaining two attackers holed themselves up on the ground floor and then blew themselves up when forces loyal to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov stormed the building. "A special operation to destroy the insurgents has taken place," Kadyrov said in a brief statement. He said that all the deputies and other people inside the building had been freed. Earlier, Russia's federal Investigative Committee said four attackers had been killed.

Interfax news agency also reported that the rebels had taken hostages but it was impossible to confirm this. At least 17 people were injured in the attack, one of the most brazen in Grozny for years. Russia's stock, bond and currency markets did not move on the attack and the benchmark MICEX stock index rose by 0.8 percent. Russia's leaders are struggling to contain a growing Islamist insurgency in the North Caucasus, a strip of impoverished, mainly Muslim provinces along predominantly Orthodox Christian Russia's southern border.

RUSSIA'S ISLAMIST INSURGENCY

The Kremlin had declared victory in its battle with Chechen separatists following two wars in Chechnya to crush separatists since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union. The federal government has poured money into rebuilding Grozny, which was devastated in the wars, and Kadyrov boasts that Chechnya is more peaceful than the neighbouring regions of Dagestan and Ingushetia. President Dmitry Medvedev said last November that strife in the North Caucasus was Russia's biggest domestic problem.

Human rights activists say the Kremlin has relied for far too long on local leaders and security forces whose heavy-handed tactics have exacerbated the insurgency. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's policy in Chechnya has been to back Kadyrov, a former rebel who switched sides at the outbreak of Moscow's second war in Chechnya. "The bet on Kadyrov, who promised to place everything under control, proved wrong," said Yevgeny Volk, a political analyst at the Yeltsin Foundation, a Moscow-based think tank.

Both Putin and Medvedev spoke to Kadyrov by telephone about the attack, a sign of support for the Chechen leader. Kadyrov's spokesman was not immediately available for comment. Local leaders say a mix of clan feuds, poverty, Islamism and heavy-handed tactics by law enforcement agencies has driven youths into the hands of rebels who want to create a Sharia-based pan-Caucasus state. "The potential of this insurgency is immense, it is constantly fostered by unemployment and poverty," said Volk. "In my view, the Kremlin has run out of ideas for a solution to this problem."

(Additional reporting by Alexei Anishchuk, writing by Guy Faulconbridge and Steve Gutterman; Editing by David Stamp)

 

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Six dead as Russian special forces repel suicide attack on Chechen parliament


Six dead as Russian special forces repel suicide attack on Chechen parliament

Russian special forces have repelled a suicide attack by Islamist militants on the Chechen parliament that left six people dead.

By Andrew Osborn, Moscow
Published: 10:49AM BST 19 Oct 2010

The incident occurred as Rashid Nurgaliyev, the Russian interior minister, was visiting the Chechen capital though he was reported to be nowhere near the scene at the time of the attack. Mr Nurgaliyev said after the attack: "As always, they (the militants) failed. They were intercepted by interior ministry troops. "Situations like today occur very rarely.

Here (in Chechnya) it is stable and safe. The militant underground has been practically decapitated." Russian news agencies reported that automatic weapons fire could still be heard inside the parliament complex late on Tuesday morning and that Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed head of Chechnya, was personally leading the operation to “neutralise” the militants.

The brazen attack will undermine the Kremlin’s oft-repeated claim that stability has been brought to Chechnya thanks to Mr Kadyrov who human rights groups accuse of heading a brutal local regime that has only served to inflame Islamist extremism. Though lone suicide bombers have sometimes struck Grozny in recent years they have not been able to mount organised attacks such as this and Mr Kadyrov has repeatedly claimed that they are a defeated force on their last legs.

Russia has fought two wars in Chechnya since the collapse of the Soviet Union to crush separatist rebels who later became into Islamist extremists. But it has now scaled back much of its forces and left governing the republic to loyalist Chechens such as Mr Kadyrov. The militants say their aim is to establish an Islamic caliphate across the entire North Caucasus region of southern Russia. There have been signs that they have been getting more radical and in March two female suicide bombers from neighbouring Dagestan blew themselves up on the Moscow metro, killing forty people.