Russian forces rescue siege battle police

The storming came a day after Islamic militants launched a major attack on police and government buildings in Nalchik, a provincial capital in Russia’s volatile Caucasus region, turning the city into a war zone wracked by gunfire and explosions.

Officials said at least 85 people were killed yesterday, including 61 attackers, and that militants were holding hostages at a police station hours after the heavy fighting died down.

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.

Russian 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.

ITAR-Tass said that some rebels tried to escape the city in a van but crashed into a tree and were surrounded and killed. It was unclear how many militants were in the vehicle.

At a building housing the souvenir shop, wounded militants released three hostages in exchange for water, but one of those freed said the attackers were still holding three captives.

The top regional official said militants held five hostages at the police precinct building, and shots rang out late into the night whil armoured personnel carriers drew close to the station.

At an emergency meeting early today, hours before dawn, Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev ordered police to step up efforts to neutralise the two remaining pockets of resistance, saying the five militants in the police station had been urged to surrender, Russian news agencies reported.

“They have been given some time to think, but it’s understood that nobody is going to wait endlessly for their decision,” ITAR-Tass and Interfax quoted Nurgaliyev as saying.

He said the militants at the souvenir shop had refused to make contact with authorities and that “measures to liquidate them are being taken,” ITAR-Tass reported.

Nurgaliyev said 2,000 police troops had been brought into the city and that helicopters patrolled overhead.

After the heavy fighting that began Thursday morning and lasted some six hours eased, Deputy Interior Minister Andrei Novikov said that 61 militants were killed, some from Kabardino-Balkariya and some from other republics in the Russian Caucasus. Russian and regional officials said 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 destailised the entire Russian Caucasus since the early 1990s. Originally a separatist movement, the rebel struggle has melded increasingly with Islamic extremism and spread far beyond Chechnya’s borders.

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, 60 miles southeast of Nalchik.

The Kavkaz-Centre Web site, seen as a voice for rebels loyal to Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, said it had received a message claiming responsibility for yesterday’s attack on behalf of the Caucasus Front. It said the group is part of the Chechen rebel forces and includes Yarmuk, an alleged militant Islamic group based in Kabardino-Balkariya.

The strategy of launching simultaneous attacks on police facilitis was similar to last year’s siege in another Caucasus republic, Ingushetia, in which 92 people died and police armouries were looted. Basayev claimed responsibility for those attacks and the Beslan raid.

Deputy Prosecutor General Vladimir Kolesnikov said suspects detained yesterday said the offensive was carried out under orders from two wanted militants – one of them a supporter of Basayev.

But armed forces chief of staff Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky said he had no evidence Basayev was involved. Shcherbakov and another official said there was no evidence to support speculation Basayev had been killed.

Deputy Interior Minister Alexander Chekalin said yesterday’s fighting began after police launched an operation to capture about 10 militants in a Nalchik suburb, and that the attacks were aimed at diverting police. All 10 suspects were killed, he said.

Gunmen attacked three police stations, the city’s airport and regional headquarters of the Interior Ministry and Federal Security Service in the morning, a police officer said on condition of anonymity.

They also attacked the city’s military commissariat, the officer said.

The attack at the airport was repelled, the facility was placed under military control.

The militants also attacked the regional headquarters of Russia’s prison system, a government press office said.

A teacher who gave only his first name, Spartak, said children at his school had been evacuated from the building, near a police station and an anti-terrorism office at the centre of the attacks. Black smoke billowed from the building as panic-stricken parents searched for their children.

Cars were overturned or gutted, and Russian television footage showed the bloodied bodies of what appeared to be attackers in the streets.