Chechen terrorists launch strikes

Scores of Islamic terrorists launched simultaneous attacks on police and government buildings in the city of Nalchik in Russia’s turbulent Caucasus region Thursday, sparking battles that killed at least 49 people.

Chechen rebels claimed responsibility for the attacks, which forced the evacuation of schools and left corpses littering the streets of Nalchik, the capital of the republic of Kabardino-Balkariya.

The Chechen rebels’ decade-long struggle against Russia, originally a separatist movement, has melded increasingly with Islamic extremism in the past decade and spread far beyond Chechnya’s borders to encompass the whole turbulent Russian Caucasus region.

President Vladimir Putin ordered a total blockade of Nalchik, a city of 235,000, to prevent terrorists from slipping out, and he said armed resisters would be shot, said Russian Deputy Interior Minister Alexander Chekalin.

Death toll estimated at 49

Estimates of the number of terrorists involved ranged from 60 to 300. The attacks began with heavy arms fire and explosions, and sporadic shooting continued for four hours afterward.

Officials gave conflicting casualty figures, ranging from 49 to as many as 63.

Fyodor Shcherbakov, a spokesman for presidential envoy Dmitry Kozak, said 49 were killed - 25 rebels were killed, 12 police officers and 12 civilians.

He said the number was constantly rising as bodies were being discovered.

Hours earlier, officials said 63 people had been killed. Chekalin said that figure included 50 terrorists and at least 10 police officers. Local Health Ministry spokesman Stepan Kuskov said at least three civilians were among the dead, and 84 people were wounded. The ITAR-Tass news agency quoted Asker Zhigunov as saying 15 civilians’ bodies had been brought in to a city hospital.

Hostages taken, 12 terrorists detained

Dmitry Kozak, Putin’s envoy to the southern region, said today’s attackers were holding hostages at a police station, but he did not specify whether they were civilians or officers. A spokeswoman for the republic’s Interior Ministry, Marina Kyasova, said police on the upper floors of the building were battling attackers on the ground floor and denied that hostages had been taken.

Deputy Russian Prosecutor General Vladimir Kolesnikov told the Interfax news agency that 12 terrorists had been detained. His estimate for the number of terrorists involved was 80 to 100, the news agency reported.

Police and security forces have fought pitched battles with Chechen rebels across the region, often engaging in urban warfare, and the terrorists have employed terrorist methods including suicide bombings and the seizure of more than 1,000 hostages last year in a school in the town of Beslan, about 60 miles southeast of Nalchik.

'Caucausus new front line for terrorists'

The extremism is spreading despite the government’s harsh anti-terrorist methods, from targeted killings of rebel leaders such as Aslan Maskhadov to paying rewards for information to the demolition of houses where suspected rebels have found refuge.

Alexander Ignatenko, a top Russian expert on Muslim extremists, said international terrorist groups viewed Kabardino-Balkariya and other provinces in the Caucasus as a new front line that could encourage the transfer of Islamic militants from other countries.

Military and police reinforcements were being sent to the city; a truckload of soldiers heading for Nalchik overturned, injuring 18 servicemen, a duty officer for regional road police said.