RUSSIA: Russian special forces were hunting a group of rebels from Chechnya last night, after they stormed the capital of a neighbouring region and killed more than 50 people, including senior local officials, in their most audacious mass raid in years. Daniel McLaughlin reports from Moscow
More than 100 fighters burst into Nazran and two smaller settlements in Ingushetia late on Monday night, razing the republic's Interior Ministry and police headquarters before melting away towards Chechnya with a large cache of stolen weapons.
The Kremlin's envoy for southern Russia, Mr Vladimir Yakovlev, said the attackers killed 47 police and border guards. The acting interior minister was killed along with at least four other officials.
Some reports said 18 civilians had also died, and more than 50 people had been injured, in almost five hours of fierce fighting that left charred bodies and pools of blood on the streets of Nazran.
It was the biggest guerrilla attack in Ingushetia since the Kremlin launched the first of two wars in a decade with Chechen separatists in 1994, and the most spectacular operation by rebels since 40 of them seized a Moscow theatre and 800 hostages in October 2002.
President Vladimir Putin demanded swift justice for the attackers.
"They must be found and destroyed. Those whom it is possible to take alive must be handed over to the courts," he told a meeting of security chiefs.
Military trucks and armoured personnel carriers brought reinforcements from neighbouring regions into Ingushetia, where officials said federal troops were surrounding rebels at Galashki, close to the Chechen border.
A reporter for Russia's NTV television, close to Galashki, said the village and surrounding area were quiet, contradicting Russia's Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov's claim yesterday afternoon that most of the guerrillas had been killed or captured.
The rebels seized part of a major regional highway on Monday night, using fake security service documents to seize checkpoints and gunning down policemen who offered resistance. Police were investigating whether some rebels had launched their raid from a disused flour mill in central Nazran.
As well as blasting their way through central Nazran, rebels raided the town of Karabulak and the village of Sleptsovsk, catching Ingushetia's security services napping with an attack that appeared well-planned and clinically executed. Only two rebels were killed during the attack.
"A policeman who passed us as he was running away said they had come from everywhere. The rebels walked right up to the interior ministry headquarters and I heard them shout 'Allah-u-Akhbar' [God is great]," said Nazran resident Mr Mogammed Saprolei.
Ingushetia's authoritarian leader, Mr Murat Zyazikov, has vowed to prevent Chechnya's travails spreading into his unstable region, where he survived a car bomb attack in April, and where thousands of Chechens have sought refuge from war at home.