A Russian policeman (partly hidden) stands near the body of a gunman killed by the security forces in Nalchik yesterday. - REUTERS
NALCHIK (AP):
ISLAMIC MILITANTS launched a major attack on police and government buildings in a provincial capital in Russia's volatile Caucasus region yesterday, turning the city into a war zone wracked by gunfire and explosions.
Officials said at least 85 people were killed, including 61 attackers, and that militants were holding hostages at a police station. The top regional official said five or six militants held five hostages there. Shots rang out late into the night while armoured personnel carriers drew close to the station.
At a building housing a souvenir shop, wounded militants released three hostages in exchange for water, but one of those freed said the attackers were still holding three captives.
Chechen rebels claimed responsibility for the offensive in Nalchik, the capital of the republic of Kabardino-Balkariya, which opened a new front in Russia's decade-old war against Islamic rebels.
President Vladimir Putin, beleaguered by attacks that have killed hundreds of civilians and underscored his failure to bring the turbulent Caucasus under control, ordered a total blockade of Nalchik to prevent militants from slipping out and ordered security forces to shoot any armed resisters.
12 COPS AMONG VICTIMS
After the heavy fighting died down, Deputy Interior Minister Andrei Novikov said late yesterday that 61 militants were killed, some from Kabardino-Balkariya and some from other republics in the Russian Caucasus. Fyodor Shcherbakov, a spokesman for presidential envoy Dmitry Kozak, said earlier that 12 civilians and 12 police officers were killed.
Russian news agencies, citing figures from Russia's Centre for Catastrophic Medicine, reported that 13 people were killed and 116 others were hospitalised, but it was unclear whether those figures referred only to civilians.
Estimates of the number of militants involved ranged from 60 to 300, and Interfax quoted an aide to the president of Kabardino-Balkariya as saying late yesterday that 17 had been detained.
The region has suffered growing violence apparently connected to Islamic extremists and the Chechen rebels' fight against Russian forces, which has devastated Chechnya and destabilised the entire Russian Caucasus since the early 1990s.
Police and security forces have fought battles with militants across the region, and the rebels have employed terrorist methods including suicide bombings and the seizure of more than 1,000 hostages last year in a school in Beslan, about 100 kilometres (60 miles) south-east of Nalchik.
