The Fall Exacerbation of Militants
// Wahhabis attack the capital of Kabardino-Balkaria
Fights in Nalchik
Militants attacked police, security and military buildings yesterday morning in Nalchik, the capital of the Kabardino-Balkaria internal republic. The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office accuses Anzor Astemirov, the leader of the local Wahhabis on the federal wanting list, of masterminding the forays. However, some witnesses claim to have seen Shamil Basayev in the city too. 24 policemen and civilians were killed, and some 100 were injured. The Interior Minister says 60 militants were eliminated.
The Morning Raid
The militants launched the first attack at 9 am. City residents claim to have seen not only the notorious Anzor Astemirov, but also Shamil Basayev. They say that he coordinated the militants’ actions. A part of them, probably led by Basayev, entered the city. The group was international: there were Chechens, Ingushs, Tatars and Arabs. Some people say they have seen a Negro as well. All other militants were locals.
Several groups of militants carried out simultaneous attacks on the buildings of the regional Interior Ministry, the local FSB, the Anti-Terrorism Center, three city police stations, the republic’s OMON and a regiment of the patrol service. Besides that, the militants machine-funned the company of the 135 motor-rifle regiment and the Nalchik frontier squad situated near the airport.
The militants drove in cars, threw explosives and grenades into the windows of the buildings, machine-gunned and then fired from self-firers. The police and the military answered back. Constant bursts of sub-machine gun fire and of grenades were heard during half an hour in the city’s center and the districts of Gorny and Iskozh.
“We had just returned from a break when we heard shots on the street,” says Aslan Sokurov, a collection officer, whose room is a few meters off the Interior Ministry’s building. “I went out into the street and saw a car parked by the police building – five armed men scattered out of it. Two of them opened machine-gun fire, one made a shot from a grenade launcher, and two others started throwing grenades at the entrance. Later, they exchanged the arms, and the policemen fired back. The shoot-out lasted some five or seven minutes, the roar was terrible. The militants got into the car and went along Kulev prospect to Lenin prospect.
The policemen later recounted that before the Nalchik attack, there was a special police search operation on early Thursday morning to arrest a group of Wahhabis by the village of Belaya Rechka, outside the Kabardino-Balkarian capital. The police found the militants in a forest but the insurgents opened heavy firing. Three militants were shot, one policeman was injured. After that, the military blockaded the rebels in the forest. There were a few warlords in the group who managed to inform their accomplices of the incident, and the latter decided to set out immediately, all the more they had been prepared for that long before. The law enforcement agencies had received much information recently saying that militants from the local jamaat led by Anzor Astemirot, wanted for the attack on the State Drug Control office, were masterminding a major raid on the republic’s military and police forces and other terrorist acts. The latter fact was proved by a cache with a half a ton of explosives that the police found in Nalchik last Sunday.
Militants Leave, Hostages Left
The militants drove to Lenin prospekt where policemen on duty at the traffic warden post met them with the fire. The military joined later on a minibus. The Wahhabis scattered in all directions out of the car but two of them who tried to run into the forest were killed. A policeman was wounded in the shoot-out. The rest of the rebels had the time to hide in the territory of a kindergarten where they holed up for three hours until the military forced them out. The traffic had been cut on Lenin prospekt by that time, and the police cordoned off the street.
“Let me in! My children in at the kindergarten,” a 35-ish woman wearing a helmet begged a policeman. He was steadfast but quite polite: “Don’t worry. There are no bandits in the building. Teachers took the children down to the basement, and we have put up guards.” “Guards! Basement! These are children there!” the woman was exasperated. Other parents joined her and were ready to come at the policeman. The cordoning off was lifted after a while, and the parents were allowed take their children. By the way, children from all school and colleges had been evacuated by that time.
A huge pole of smoke heaved above the city center at 10:30. This was the building of the Center on Combating Terrorism in Nogmov street that caught fire.
“They attacked us from two sides at a time: from the façade, from Nogmov street, and from the rear, from Chaikovsky street,” an employee at the center says. “They fired from the school yard across Nogmov street, and threw grenades from the other side.”
Tamerlan Kazikhanov, the employee at the center’s press service, died at the beginning of the fight. “As soon as the shooting broke out, he ran into the street with his camera,” a special forces officer recounts. “But he got wounded in the leg straightaway. He bandaged it but a sniper’s bullet caught him.”
Two more special forces officers and three officers of the rapid response squad were killed. The rebels lost six.
At the same time, another militant group struck on the building of the first department of the Interior. Azamat Kardanov, a witness, says: “I was going back home along the building after I took my daughter to school. All of the sudden, a few bearded men rushed out of the car and started shooting. I hid in the doorway of a nearby house. They killed a policeman at the start, and after that – a young man, a civilian, who was standing by the car. They threw grenades, the policemen responded by grenades too. It was impossible to get in this shoot-out who was a policeman and who was a Wahhabi. A guy in a T-short with a rifle came up to me. I thought at first he was a Wahhabi but he told me, “Be careful, there’s a militant hiding in the next doorway.”
The militants managed to seize the Arsenal hunting shop with many weapons near the first department of the Interior on Kirov street. The rebels drove a tractor on to the building and unbent the bars on the windows with the help of it, that is when the police appeared. The militants fired on them and cars of civilians passing by. They hit at least one car which stood in front of the shop riddled with bullets for a long time after. “We were driving down Kirov street to take our daughter from school. We were passing Arsenal when I saw a Wahhabi standing in front of the shop. He was wearing a mask and a leather jacket with an orange bondage on his arm. He was virtually covering the street with the rifle-fire. So I risked, sped up and we passed.”
The biggest clashes took place by the building of the Federal Security Service office and the third city police department. A group of the attackers machine-gunned the FSB and began drawing off to Pushkin street, and some more people holed up in a souvenir shop on the opposite side of the street. The military could not force them out till late night.
When Kommersant correspondents drove to the shop, there were single shots that sounded. “Where are you going,” a woman in a white jacket, who said her name was Tatyana, rushed at us. “The bandits locked themselves in the shop. They took a hostage and they fire constantly. D’you want to have a look? Here’s a girl in a grey jacket lying on the ground. She also hurried in there.”
The third department of the Interior was another spot where the militants managed to find a steady shelter. The attackers suffered serious losses and managed to cut their way out to the building’s ground floor and take a few policemen hostages. The number of hostages is not specified, there may be a score of them. The hostage-release operations in the shop and at the police department are still underway, as of Thursday’s night. The sweep operations are also going. Nalchik is divided into a few sectors where special forces and armored vehicles are working.
“Similar Operations May Be Held in Other Regions”
Troops and police special forces were gathered to Nalchik practically from the whole of the North Caucasus yesterday. Once the shooting got less intensive, the presidential envoy to the Southern Federal District Dmitry Kozak, Deputy Prosecutor General Vladimir Kolesnikov and Deputy Interior Minister Andrey Novikov arrived in the Kabardino-Balkarian capital. Following the meeting with the republic’s leadership and the local military and police that ended at 5 pm, the presidential envoy, dressed in a suit without a tie, went to the press in the republic’s Interior Ministry headquarters and said that the situation was already under the full control, and extra troops were drawn up to the city. “There are now two hotbeds of resistance, and the operation is now entering its final stage,” the envoy Kozak stressed. Asked about the hostages, the presidential envoy hesitated with an answer but later replied: “Yes, there are hostages,” but he would not specify the number. He also noted that the crime looked all the more cynical because it was committed in the Ramadan Month, sacred for all Muslims. “We can judge what kind of Muslims they are, after we examined a dacha where the militants’s base was located,” Kozak said. “We found two bottles of vodka and wine there, lying by the Koran.”
The presidential envoy called the actions of the law enforcement officers adequate and said that “they were inwardly ready for this to happen”, since the siloviki’s had had “certain preliminary information, but not exact”.
It was as early as this July that the Russian Interior Ministry pointed out to the fact that perhaps the largest Wahhabi jamaat in North Caucasus expanded its activities in Nalchik. The officials also predicted some terror acts of militants to happen soon. It was also at that time that some thousands of policemen and interior forces officers were gathered to the most restive North Caucasus republics, Kabardino-Balkaria, Dagestan and Ingushetia. The local military and policy has been virtually getting ready for a war ever since, which, in fact, averted the militants’ bloodshed in Nalchik like the one in Nazran last year.
Russian Deputy Prosecutor General said that some 80-100 people took part in the attack on the military and the police in Kabardino-Balkaria. He named Nalchik resident Anzor Astemirov (amir of the Kabardino-Balkarian jamaat) and Chechen-born Iless Gorchkhanov, “stanch Wahhabis” wanted for the attack on the building on the building of the State Drug Control Service, the perpetrators. However, the deputy prosecutor denied that Shamil Basayev had taken part in the attack. Rumors were going about the city that both Astemirov and Basayev died in fights, though local policemen said that they had not seen their corpses.
Vladimir Kolesnikov informed that 20 militants were killed in fights, 12 more were detained. He said that we could not avoid “tremendous losses” among the civilians. “12 citizens of the republic and 12 servicemen died.” 100 people were injured. However, Deputy Interior Minister Novikov provided different figures in the evening. According to him, 60 militants were killed, 17 were arrested. Thus, few of the militants escaped, and the losses of the militants who launched a sudden attack are almost five as much as those of the military and the police. Yet, sources of Kommersant in the republic’s law enforcement agencies suppose that these figures will change dramatically soon. “Civilians, the accidental victims of the shoot-out, could have got onto the list of the militants.”
As Kavkaz-Center website reports, yesterday’s attack was led by the Kabardino-Balkarian sector of the so-called Caucasus front. Akmed Zakaev, the spokesman for the Ichkerian president, told Kommersant that the attack was not sudden. At least, Shamil Basayev came to Kabardino-Balkaria a few days ago to hold a meeting with the leaders of the local militants. Akmed Zakaev says that the goal of yesterday’s operation is to show the strength. He also did not rule out that similar operations may be held in other regions.
Timur Samedov, Alexandra Larintseva, Nalchik; Musa Muradov
All the Article in Russian as of Oct. 14, 2005
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