6 killed in Chechnya parliament attack

Press TV, Tue Oct 19, 2010 5:34AM

 A ّfile photo showing Chechen special forces guard a road in Grozny. At least 6 people have been killed after militants attacked the parliament building in the Russian Caucasus region of Chechnya in an attempt to seize the venue.

Six people lost their lives in the fight between militants and police forces that carried out an operation to set the parliament building free. The dead include two police officers, a parliamentary official, and three militants, RIA Novosti reported on Tuesday.

According to a local interior ministry official, the gunmen seized the parliament building after taking several people as hostage.

"The parliament building has been seized and hostages taken," AFP quoted the official as saying on condition of anonymity.

Initially, a bomb was detonated outside the parliament building, and then several gunmen attacked the parliament.

Reports say that 17 people, including six police officers, were also injured in the conflict.

Chechen rebels have been fighting against Moscow since the early 1990s for an independent homeland.

Chechnya has fought two separatist wars with the Russian army since the fall of the Soviet Union.

HJ/HRF

Gunmen attack parliament building in restive Chechnya

France 24, AFP-

Militants attacked the parliament building in Russia's restive southern republic of Chechnya early on Tuesday, killing at least three security guards. Local officials say all the attackers have been killed.   

Militants (a reference to Chechen fighters) stormed parliament in Russia's conflict-torn Chechnya Tuesday, seizing deputies and gunning down guards, before being killed in a bloody standoff with security forces.

The group of up to four militants broke into the parliament building in the Chechen capital Grozny early in the morning, sparking fears of a major hostage crisis before security forces moved in to take the deputies to safety.

Officials said that all the militants were killed by the security forces, with reports adding that some had been shot dead while others had killed themselves by detonating suicide charges.

"We heard shots in the courtyard and we knew they were trying to take us hostage. We managed to take refuge on the third floor where we stayed until the end of the operation," a spokesman for the Chechen parliament Zelim Yakhikhanov told AFP.

Chechnya's leader Ramzan Kadyrov told the Interfax news agency that Chechen security forces staged an intense 20-minute operation to kill the militants and free the parliament deputies and employees from the building.

"All deputies are alive and were taken from the territory of the parliament building to safety," Kadyrov said.

Three interior ministry security guards and one civilian employee of the parliament were killed after militants stormed the parliament building, a spokesman for the interior ministry told AFP.

Russian news agency reports said that two militants blew themselves up in suicide blasts and the others were killed in an exchange of fire with security forces.

According to the investigative committee of prosecutors, 17 people were wounded in the incident.

Interfax said parliamentary speaker Dukuvakha Abdurakhmanov had been evacuated from the parliament building in an armoured vehicle and had not been hurt.

Russian Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev, by coincidence on a trip to Grozny, described the operation by the security forces to free the deputies as a success.

"The Chechen interior ministry acted professionally and competently. This meant that the operation was carried out successfully," he added.

The special operation was personally led by Kadyrov, Interfax quoted a security source as saying.

The Kremlin has been fighting separatist insurgents in the Northern Caucasus since after the collapse of the Soviet Union and waged a war in 1994-1996 against separatist rebels in Chechnya.

However, after a second war broke out in Chechnya in 1999, the rebellion's inspiration moved towards Islam with the aim of imposing an Islamic state in the region.

Russia in April 2009 ended a decade long "counter-terror" operation that had been in place for a decade in Chechnya, a move seen by some analysts as premature.

Chechnya has in the past years seen a relative improvement in security under its strongman leader, Kadyrov, although attacks remain a common occurrence.

But Kadyrov, himself an ex-rebel, has been heavily criticised for his tough tactics by rights groups, who accuse him of torture and using his own personal forces to crack down on critics.

Russia remains on high alert for militant attacks after the double bombings carried out by two female suicide bombers on the Moscow metro on March 29 killed 40 and wounded more than 100.

Over 330 people were killed in Russia's most shocking hostage tragedy in 2004 when Chechen militants stormed a school in the town of Beslan in the Northern Caucasus region of North Ossetia.