Posted on August 29, 2010 - by Venik

Chechnya shootout leaves 19 dead

Ramzan Kadyrov’s guards in gun battle with separatists in president’s home village

Five civilians were among 19 people killed today in a shootout between the Chechen president’s security guards and suspected separatists, officials said.

At least 12 insurgents and two security officers were killed when the rebels entered Tsentoroi, Ramzan Kadyrov’s home village, his spokesman Alvi Karimov said. TV reports said five civilians were killed in the crossfire.

Kadyrov, who is thought to regularly supervise security operations in the field, was in the village at the time and directed the counter-offensive, Karimov said.

“We let them into the village so they couldn’t escape,” Kadyrov told Channel One television, which showed him examining the bodies of the suspected militants strewn across a road. “We forced them into a place where they could be eliminated.”

A reporter at the scene saw homes damaged by fire and bullets, with body parts lying among the rubble.

Resident Vargan Edelgeriyeva, 48, said the gun battle started at about 3am at a construction site approximately 150 metres from Kadyrov’s residence.

Militants entered homes but were quickly surrounded, Edelgeriyeva said. In one house an insurgent detonated explosives, perhaps a grenade, killing himself and a 30-year-old resident, she said.

Police averted a possible assassination attempt on Kadyrov in 2009, shooting dead the driver of a car suspected of containing explosives before he could reach a construction site where Kadyrov was due to make an appearance.

In a separate incident today, security forces in nearby Dagestan province shot dead four suspected militants travelling in two cars when they refused to stop at a police checkpoint, according to police spokesman Magomed Tagirov. He said weapons were later found in the cars.

Russia’s volatile North Caucasus suffers daily attacks by insurgents seeking independence from Moscow, but this weekend’s bloodshed has been especially fierce.

On Saturday, nine suspected militants were killed in two separate shootouts with police in the Kabardino-Balkariya republic, while five suspected militants and two police officers were killed in another shootout in Dagestan.

Kadyrov previously fought on the side of the rebels but switched sides and was installed by the Kremlin as Chechen leader in 2007. Comparative peace has arrived in Chechnya and its capital, Grozny, since then, but rights activists say the price has been brutal. They allege Kadyrov has directed widespread human rights violations, including abductions and summary executions of suspected rebels and sympathisers.

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