hist2004
06-30-2004, 02:26 PM
A night's reign of terror, days of foreboding
C. J. Chivers/NYT NYT
Saturday, June 26, 2004
NAZRAN, Russia As the shooting erupted here in the Russian republic of Ingushetia on Monday night, Senior Lieutenant Abuyazid Kostoyev gathered four officers at the central police barracks, hurried them to a police car and sped toward the chaos they heard outside.
Almost immediately they were under fire. Kostoyev scrambled out of the car and was struck in the abdomen by a rifle bullet. He took shelter in a bread shack, his only weapon a pistol against a crescendo of fire.
Elsewhere, at the rural police headquarters at the city's edge, officers were similarly outmatched. One instant they had been standing in a cluster outside, smoking, preparing to make another routine patrol. The next they were sprinting madly as bursts of automatic rifle fire whirred past.
"Allah Akhbar," their enemy's voices shouted from behind muzzle flashes. Magomed Yevloev, a senior sergeant who was also shot in his stomach, remembered huddling with his dying captain at the police station door. The captain issued orders as he bled to death.
"He told us, 'Watch the windows and doors; don't let them get closer or they will throw a grenade,'" Yevloev said. In the aftermath of the raid in Ingushetia, the authorities and survivors here have reconstructed a grim tale of the night when a tiny Russian republic briefly ceded control to an Islamic guerrilla force.
Minutes into the raids, they say, the police were helplessly pinned down and a night of terror was unfolding at a swift pace. In accounts that they share with mixed bewilderment and rage, Ingush officials and survivors of the battles say the Islamic militants quickly demonstrated an advanced degree of organization and tactical skill. Having simultaneously infiltrated several villages and cities in the darkness, the fighters engaged in operations of two very different sorts.
Some bands sacked border posts and police stations, confining men like Yevloev. Others overpowered a network of road checkpoints and traffic circles, where they waited upon the likes of Kostoyev and other police officers who ventured out. And it was only to get worse. With control of the cities, officials and survivors say, the militants engaged in a chilling deception before they quietly slipped away ahead of the rising sun.
At each checkpoint along the roads, they replaced the dead or retreating police officers with men in similar uniforms and began coolly checking the documents of each car that approached. Almost anyone who displayed a police or military identification was promptly killed. "Everyone was deceived by the rebels' uniforms; they thought the rebels were us, the riot police, who were here," said a riot policeman on duty near an armored vehicle at the nearby Ekazhevo traffic circle on Friday. "This is why the first thing the law enforcement officers did was show their IDs. Immediately each of them was shot." As a result, for several hours, off-duty Russian and Ingush government officials, believing they could help their trapped friends, unknowingly drove directly to their deaths. Around the traffic circle Friday, signs of the killings remained. At each spot where a car had been stopped were bits of shattered windshield and streaks of darkened blood. Spent Kalashnikov cartridges and bullet fragments rested alongside the stains. In one pile of glass were five human teeth.
Ibragim Chakhkiev, a guard assigned to the presidential residence, said that after the sun had risen Tuesday and the guerrillas had withdrawn, more than a dozen corpses of police officers and soldiers were scattered throughout this one intersection alone. "Now I remember it as a kind of dream," he said. "It is hard to believe it has happened." Such scenes were repeated elsewhere. Timur Mogushkov, chairman of the Ingush republic's government, said the militants killed 97 people, nearly two-thirds from the ranks of law enforcement or military agencies. An additional 105 people were wounded, he said. The republic is now bustling with tales of heroism, luck and woe. Dr. Akhmed Mogushkov, the chief doctor at the republic's main hospital, avoided gunfire on his way to work by hopping fences and moving from one courtyard and patio garden at a time. Another surgeon, Alaudin Akhushkov, 67, made his way to the hospital on foot. He said he had been walking down a street "where bullets flew like wasps" when he came upon two young militants firing at a police station.
A moment of strange detachment ensued. After one militant shot his grenade launcher, he turned to the surgeon and politely asked him where he was going. The doctor told him he was needed at the hospital. The militant, whom the doctor described as a clean-shaven Chechen fighter, perhaps 25 years old, offered advice. "He told me: 'You might get killed this way. We advise you to go back and take another route,'" Akhushkov said. He attributed his luck to age. "They saw I am an old man," he said. The attack remains a source of enduring mystery here, a few miles from Chechnya, where war and lawlessness have simmered for most of a decade. Chechen officials say that the force that overwhelmed Ingushetia was principally composed of Ingush fighters, and led by an Ingush emir. A pro-Chechen Web site has said that a group of Ingush religious fighters have claimed responsibility and vowed more attacks to avenge what they describe as the repression of Muslims here. Ingush officials dispute both claims, and say they were attacked from Chechnya by a mixed force of Chechen, Ingush and Russian fighters, perhaps with Arab jihadists among them. The authorities also said they have taken several dozen people into custody and three have confessed, but the details of the attackers' organization are not yet clear. Since the attacks the republic has been on edge. Riot police cluster at main intersections and the government complex is under heavy guard. The border guards' headquarters, scarred by fire, has been converted to an urban fortress, with sandbags stacked in windows and men walking patrol on the roof. President Vladimir Putin announced Thursday that the republic would be reinforced with federal law enforcement troops. But residents speak of fears the militants might strike again and pull the republic into the violence that has consumed neighboring Chechnya.
Regards,
Hist2004
C. J. Chivers/NYT NYT
Saturday, June 26, 2004
NAZRAN, Russia As the shooting erupted here in the Russian republic of Ingushetia on Monday night, Senior Lieutenant Abuyazid Kostoyev gathered four officers at the central police barracks, hurried them to a police car and sped toward the chaos they heard outside.
Almost immediately they were under fire. Kostoyev scrambled out of the car and was struck in the abdomen by a rifle bullet. He took shelter in a bread shack, his only weapon a pistol against a crescendo of fire.
Elsewhere, at the rural police headquarters at the city's edge, officers were similarly outmatched. One instant they had been standing in a cluster outside, smoking, preparing to make another routine patrol. The next they were sprinting madly as bursts of automatic rifle fire whirred past.
"Allah Akhbar," their enemy's voices shouted from behind muzzle flashes. Magomed Yevloev, a senior sergeant who was also shot in his stomach, remembered huddling with his dying captain at the police station door. The captain issued orders as he bled to death.
"He told us, 'Watch the windows and doors; don't let them get closer or they will throw a grenade,'" Yevloev said. In the aftermath of the raid in Ingushetia, the authorities and survivors here have reconstructed a grim tale of the night when a tiny Russian republic briefly ceded control to an Islamic guerrilla force.
Minutes into the raids, they say, the police were helplessly pinned down and a night of terror was unfolding at a swift pace. In accounts that they share with mixed bewilderment and rage, Ingush officials and survivors of the battles say the Islamic militants quickly demonstrated an advanced degree of organization and tactical skill. Having simultaneously infiltrated several villages and cities in the darkness, the fighters engaged in operations of two very different sorts.
Some bands sacked border posts and police stations, confining men like Yevloev. Others overpowered a network of road checkpoints and traffic circles, where they waited upon the likes of Kostoyev and other police officers who ventured out. And it was only to get worse. With control of the cities, officials and survivors say, the militants engaged in a chilling deception before they quietly slipped away ahead of the rising sun.
At each checkpoint along the roads, they replaced the dead or retreating police officers with men in similar uniforms and began coolly checking the documents of each car that approached. Almost anyone who displayed a police or military identification was promptly killed. "Everyone was deceived by the rebels' uniforms; they thought the rebels were us, the riot police, who were here," said a riot policeman on duty near an armored vehicle at the nearby Ekazhevo traffic circle on Friday. "This is why the first thing the law enforcement officers did was show their IDs. Immediately each of them was shot." As a result, for several hours, off-duty Russian and Ingush government officials, believing they could help their trapped friends, unknowingly drove directly to their deaths. Around the traffic circle Friday, signs of the killings remained. At each spot where a car had been stopped were bits of shattered windshield and streaks of darkened blood. Spent Kalashnikov cartridges and bullet fragments rested alongside the stains. In one pile of glass were five human teeth.
Ibragim Chakhkiev, a guard assigned to the presidential residence, said that after the sun had risen Tuesday and the guerrillas had withdrawn, more than a dozen corpses of police officers and soldiers were scattered throughout this one intersection alone. "Now I remember it as a kind of dream," he said. "It is hard to believe it has happened." Such scenes were repeated elsewhere. Timur Mogushkov, chairman of the Ingush republic's government, said the militants killed 97 people, nearly two-thirds from the ranks of law enforcement or military agencies. An additional 105 people were wounded, he said. The republic is now bustling with tales of heroism, luck and woe. Dr. Akhmed Mogushkov, the chief doctor at the republic's main hospital, avoided gunfire on his way to work by hopping fences and moving from one courtyard and patio garden at a time. Another surgeon, Alaudin Akhushkov, 67, made his way to the hospital on foot. He said he had been walking down a street "where bullets flew like wasps" when he came upon two young militants firing at a police station.
A moment of strange detachment ensued. After one militant shot his grenade launcher, he turned to the surgeon and politely asked him where he was going. The doctor told him he was needed at the hospital. The militant, whom the doctor described as a clean-shaven Chechen fighter, perhaps 25 years old, offered advice. "He told me: 'You might get killed this way. We advise you to go back and take another route,'" Akhushkov said. He attributed his luck to age. "They saw I am an old man," he said. The attack remains a source of enduring mystery here, a few miles from Chechnya, where war and lawlessness have simmered for most of a decade. Chechen officials say that the force that overwhelmed Ingushetia was principally composed of Ingush fighters, and led by an Ingush emir. A pro-Chechen Web site has said that a group of Ingush religious fighters have claimed responsibility and vowed more attacks to avenge what they describe as the repression of Muslims here. Ingush officials dispute both claims, and say they were attacked from Chechnya by a mixed force of Chechen, Ingush and Russian fighters, perhaps with Arab jihadists among them. The authorities also said they have taken several dozen people into custody and three have confessed, but the details of the attackers' organization are not yet clear. Since the attacks the republic has been on edge. Riot police cluster at main intersections and the government complex is under heavy guard. The border guards' headquarters, scarred by fire, has been converted to an urban fortress, with sandbags stacked in windows and men walking patrol on the roof. President Vladimir Putin announced Thursday that the republic would be reinforced with federal law enforcement troops. But residents speak of fears the militants might strike again and pull the republic into the violence that has consumed neighboring Chechnya.
Regards,
Hist2004