Chechen militant attack on Russian government sites leaves 60 dead

Chechen rebels on Thursday launched a series of attacks on government installations in a southern Russian city, triggering fierce street gun battles with security forces in which more than 60 people, including 50 attackers, were killed and scores injured.

About 300 armed militants simultaneously attacked three police stations, FSB security service's local headquarters and branch office of regional Border Guards at 9 AM local time in Nalchik, the capital of Kabardino-Balkaria Republic neighbouring Chechnya, nearly 1900 kilometres from Moscow, reports reaching Moscow said.

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At least 12 civilians were killed and over 60 injured in the street fighting across Nalchik between the militants and security services as the army blocked the city, Kabardino-Balkaria President Arsen Konokov said. Some reports, however, said over 20 civilians were killed. Moscow has cancelled all flights from and to Nalchik, NTV reported.

Chechen rebels claimed responsibility for the coordinated attacks. "A detachment of the Caucasus Front (a structural unit of the armed forces of the Chechen Ishkeria Republic) went to the city…" of Nalchik, the Kavkazcenter website said, claiming that it received the statement from Chechen 'mujahideen.'

Referring to the gunmen involved in the attack, the website posting said, "One of the strike forces is the 'Yarmuk' jamat of Kabardino-Balkaria." The security forces captured scores of militants, TV channels reported, showing footage of bullet riddled, smashed and overturned cars on the streets of provincial capital. Heavy armoured carriers were sent in as some of the militants are reported to be holding an unspecified number of hostages on the ground floor of one of the police stations, Russian presidential envoy in the South Federal District Dmitry Kozak told the TV channels.

Military and police reinforcements were being sent to Nalchik, which is about 100 kilometres northwest of Beslan, where Chechen rebels took hundreds of hostages at a school in September 2004. More than 330 people, mostly children, were killed in the Beslan school carnage. Earlier in 2005, Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered security forces to deal more severely with suspected militants in the south of the country.

Putin has ordered full blockade of Nalchik amidst reports of thousands of people fleeing for safety in the wake of the militant attack in which seven security personnel were also reported to have been killed. "The President has ordered us to keep every militant within Nalchik and to eliminate any armed person resisting detention," First Deputy Interior Minister Alexander Chekalin said after an emergency meeting with the Russian President at his country residence.

"The order of the President will be fulfilled," he said. Putin's order came amidst Russian media reports that thousands of local residents were fleeing the city on mini vans and cars following the broad daylight attack on the police and security installations. Many bodies lay unattended on the streets of Nalchik due to the ongoing exchange of fire. The daylight attack in one of the most stable Caucasian republic is seen as a clear challenge to Putin's claim of fully controlling the situation in the volatile Caucasus region of Russia following the Beslan school carnage.