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By Arbi Arbiyev SLEPTSOVSK (AFP) - Reports said fifteen people, mainly policemen, died when, in their bloodiest attack in months, Chechen fighters set off a powerful bomb outside a police station in the shattered Chechen capital of Grozny.
Eight people died instantly when pro-independence Chechens detonated a jeep packed with explosives outside the interior ministry command post, another seven died later in hospital, ITAR-TASS news agency reported. Most of the victims appeared to be Chechens working in the pro-Moscow police force. NTV private television gave the same death toll but President Vladimir Putin's spokesperson on the Chechen conflict, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, said the number of dead stood at ten, with 16 wounded. A spokesperson for Islamic breakaway republic Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov said in neighboring Ingushetia by telephone that forces led by Issa Munayev, Chechen "commander" of Grozny, had mounted the attack. "This diversionary act was carried out by a unit under the command of Issa Munayev," said Maskhadov's spokesperson. He added that 15 policemen died in the attack in the city's southern Oktyabrysky district and another six were severely wounded. A pro-Moscow Chechen policeman who had been standing guard outside the base described a scene of utter chaos after the bomb explosion. "I saw a policeman sprawled on the ground covered in blood," said Suleyeman Gemayev to NTV television. "I looked all around and on the roadside near the scene of the blast there were a lot of bodies lying around. The others just stood there motionless," he added. At Grozny's Hospital number nine, the deputy head Abdullah Ismailov said that 20 casualties had been transported to the clinic, including 16 policemen and three women and a civilian man. Seven later died of their wounds, none of them women, he added. Local pro-Moscow Chechen police told Interfax that the Chechen fighters had probably used radio-controlled equipment to detonate the vehicle, parked outside an interior ministry base in the city's southern Oktyabrysky district. Three policemen, three local prosecution officials and two civilians died at the scene, the news agency quoted police as saying. Three suspects were later arrested trying to flee Grozny in a car, a top prosecution official told Interfax. The Chechen attack came despite stringent security measures, including curfews, introduced by Russian forces in the breakaway republic following a wave of bloody Chechen ambushes in July. The Chechen civilian who runs the pro-Moscow administration in Chechnya, Akhmad Kadyrov, warned that the Chechens would continue to wage highly effective warfare in Grozny and elsewhere in the republic. "The city is in ruins, you can still hide out there and carry out terrorist acts, not only in Grozny but in Gudermes too. People are civilians during the day and at night they plant bombs," he said. Russian forces, which poured into Chechnya on October 1, 1999, in a self-styled "anti-terrorist" campaign, continue to suffer almost daily ambushes from Chechen fighters hiding out in cities and the rugged southern mountains. |
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