[ridesthemiles]

Twenty militants were killed in more than 10 hours of gunfights with security forces, 10 of them Arabs.
If you read the sentence the way it was written, the REAL problem here is that the Russians are putting Arabs in their security forces. Terrible idea. ""

I read the sentence to say that "of the 20 militants that were killed, 10 of the militants were Arab". I don't read that the Russians had Arabs in their security forces. Am I wrong?

[SAJ]

In normal English usage, the phrase ''10 of them Arabs'' will modify the closest appropriate noun, which is in this case ''forces'' (or ''security forces'' if you consider that term to be a compound noun along the same lines as ''military intelligence''...no jokes, please(w!)).

If you want to tell me that you've 20 dead guys and 10 of these are Arabs, all you have to say is:

''Twenty militants, 10 of them Arabs, were killed...etc.''

Putting the modifying clause at the end of the sentence, when what you intend to modify with it is at the very beginning of the sentence, is an hopelessly ungrammatical usage, needlessly unclear, and can (and will) create confusion in a large number of cases, as here. If (for some curious reason) you DID want to specify the ethnicity of the security forces, you would indeed write the sentence in this fashion. ''10 of them Arabs'', as placed, unquestionably is a modifier for ''forces''.