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According to RIA Novosti's source within the Russian special forces, information about a planned terrorist attack along the route of the "Sapsan" was obtained by the FSB from an informer embedded within the North Kavkaz terror network. According to the source, the conscripted agent informed the FSB that leaders of the Dagestan terror network sent Islam Hamuzhev, a resident of Kabardino-Balkariya, to Moscow for the execution of the planned act. Prior to his departure, Islam completed a bomb-making course in a terrorist camp in Dagestan. Hamuzhev's plan, when in Moscow, was to find like-minded persons to execute the act...

This confrontation is particularly acute in Dagestan. Here, Salafis, who believe in a return to the teachings of early leaders of the Muslim faith, face off against Sufis, who are supported by the official Spiritual Board of Muslims. There is intolerance on both sides. In Makhachkala, the Dagestani capital, a Salafi woman dressed in a hijab and floor-length tunic showed me a recording on her cell phone of Sheikh Said-Afandi, one of the republic's most revered Sufi leaders. "Disgusting," she said, as she watched scores of the sheikh's murids (followers) lining up to kiss his hands. "No man should make...

An image from an observation camera inside the international arrivals hall at "Domodedovo" shows the aftermath of the blast (image copyright lenta.ru) The brothers Islam and Iles Yandiev, suspected as accessories to the terrorist attack in the Moscow airport "Domodedovo," were transported to Moscow, according to a RIA Novosti report of April 2nd. According to a member of the law enforcement agencies of the North Kavkaz federal region, Yandievs were transported to the capital under guard in a transport airplane. The Yandievs were transferred from the North Osetian trial detention facility to the Moscow jail "Lefortovo." The suspects were detained...

NAZRAN, RUSSIA - Neiba scrapes out a meager income selling soil-caked clumps of wild garlic she picks in the forests of Russia's poorest province - an occupation that a growing Islamic insurgency has made increasingly hazardous. "I will only go to the forest with my husband, and even then, we are terrified every time," said Neiba, 43, as she adjusted her bright red hijab at the sprawling outdoor market in Nazran, Ingushetia's largest town. "What if we see a rebel?" "But we must make a living," she said, flashing her remaining four teeth, each of them encased in gold.

Snippet: "On the other hand, this would be the fifth time he's been killed."

"In justifying Budanov, we automatically recognize Chechnya as an independent state" An unpublished interview with Attorney Markelov We are printing a hitherto unknown interview with Stanislav Markelov, taken after he had returned from Chechnya in the early part of June 2002. Back then 'Stas' had become an attorney for the Kungayevs, the Chechen family accusing Colonel Budanov of abducting, raping, and murdering their daughter, 18 year-old Elsa Kungayeva. This is the first time that this interview, taken six and a half years ago, has been published. At the invitation of human rights groups 'Memorial', 'Civic Assistance', and others, in the...

"Russia: Suicide car bomb at city's central market kills at least 17, wounds 133 in northern Caucasus" SNIPPET: "The attacker detonated his explosives as he drove by the main entrance to the Vladikavkaz market, according to the Emergency Situations Ministry." SNIPPET: "The market and its surrounding blocks has been the target of several bomb attacks over the past dozen years, in which scores of people have died."

Aug 2010: Many women complain they have been harassed by bands of men for not wearing headscarves in Chechnya. Some of the assailants said they were working under orders from religious authorities. Aug 2010: Chechnya's mufti Sultan Mirzayev, the region's spiritual leader and a close ally of Kadyrov, makes the radical order that all eateries shut completely for the holy month of Ramadan. Though it carries no legal weight, it is followed through, residents and witnesses say. July 2010: Hardline, Kremlin-backed Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov says in a state TV interview that he was grateful to assailants who targeted women...

On a Monday morning, March 29, suicide bombers attacked two metro stations in the heart of Moscow. The detonations, timed 40 minutes apart during rush hour for maximum damage, in some ways resembled the 2004 commuter-train attack in Madrid, the July 7 bombings in London a year later and numerous other public acts of terrorism around the globe. These similarities were not lost on world leaders, who were quick to express not just sympathy but also empathy. French President Nicolas Sarkozy said, "When Moscow is attacked, we are all attacked." In June, just days before the exposure of a U.S.-based...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The price tag on a bride in Russia's Ingushetia province has been tripled by the regional government, in a sign the Muslim North Caucasus region is slipping out of Kremlin control as sharia law eclipses Russian. Against the backdrop of a bubbling Islamist insurgency, the revival of Islam in the North Caucasus following the break-up of the Soviet Union almost 20 years ago has brought sharia law to the region, revered by both rebels and ordinary citizens alike. The issue of the 'kalym', a price paid by a groom to the family of the woman he chooses...

THE Daily Mail has learnt that Israel is massing warplanes in the Caucasus for an attack on Iran. Preparations are underway to launch the military attack form Azerbaijan and Georgia, reports Akhbar Al Khaleej, quoting military sources. It has been reported that Israel was, in fact, training pilots in Turkey to launch the strike and was smuggling planes into Georgia using Turkish airspace, according to the sources.

Russia launched large-scale military exercises involving thousands of troops across parts of its southern regions on Monday which Georgia said would violate its territory. The Defence Ministry said the sweep of the week-long "Caucasus 2009" manoeuvres would include the volatile, mainly-Muslim regions of Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia - continuing focus of rebel groups seeking to prize the area from Moscow's control. Moscow sees the Caucasus mountains area as a strategically vital zone, the approach to prime agricultural and industrial regions and an important energy transit route. The Kremlin views any challenge here as a threat to the overall security and...

Russian security forces dealt a double blow to the al Qaeda-linked Caucasus Emirate during operations in the southern Russian republics late last week. Emir Magas, the military commander of the Caucasus Emirate, was captured and Yasir Amarat, a wanted terrorist commander from Jordan, was killed during raids by Russia's Federal Security Service, or FSB. On June 9, the FSB captured Emir Magas, whose real name is Ali Taziyev, during a raid in the village of Malgobek in the Republic of Ingushetia. Kavkaz Center, a jihadist website that supports the Caucasus Emirate, confirmed Magas' capture and noted his importance. Magas has...

SNIPPET: "The attack took place at a hippodrome in the city of Nalchik, capital of Russia's North Caucasus region of Kabardino-Balkaria." SNIPPET: "A law enforcement source told the RIA Novosti news agency the explosive was a time bomb, equivalent to about 5 kg of TNT. The ministry officials said the attack was aimed at civilians and was designed to hit as many people as possible." Posted by Robert on May 1, 2010 5:21 PM

It started on August 7 2008 when Georgian troops attacked Russian-backed separatists in the breakaway region of South Ossetia. The Russian Army retaliated, driving deep into Georgian territory. Tens of thousands of Georgians fled their homes and some 30,000 are still displaced. Some of them now live in a colony in Akhali Tserovani. It was built by the Georgian government, which pays cash subsidies to residents every month. The people who live there say all they want is to return to their homes. But their homes are now in Russian-occupied land. Georgia's Orthodox patriarch Ilia II says he discussed the...

Azerbaijan’s long-standing alignment with the United States is rapidly unraveling in the wake of Washington’s recent policy initiatives. As perceived from Baku, those US initiatives fly in the face of Azerbaijan’s staunch support over the years to US strategic interests and policies in the South Caucasus-Caspian region. Current US policies, however, are seen to favor Armenia in the Karabakh conflict resolution negotiations, curry favor with Armenian advocacy groups in domestic US politics, split Turkey and Azerbaijan from one another over the Karabakh issue, isolate Azerbaijan in the region, and pressure Baku into silent acquiescence with these policies. Key actors in...

It's been an embarrassing week for Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, prime minis ter and de facto czar. On Monday, Islamist suicide bombers struck just a rifle shot from the Kremlin. The worst of the two subway bombings rubbed ex-KGB man Putin's nose in it by slaughtering dozens in the Lyubanka station -- named for the notorious security-service headquarters upstairs. And the day after the two blasts killed 39 (with twice that many hospitalized), Islamist terrorists renewed their bombing campaign in Russia's Muslim republic of Daghestan, next to battered (Muslim) Chechnya.

Monday's attacks on Moscow's subways provide an odious reminder of the Russian empire's post-Cold War instability and the Russian government's severe internal challenges. As this column goes to press, no organization has claimed responsibility for the attacks that left 39 dead and scores wounded, though Russian commentators and international analysts suspect Islamist-inspired separatists in the northern Caucasus region planned and executed the terror strikes. Russian security forces are fighting guerrilla and terrorist cells based in troubled Caucasus political fragments like Dagestan, Ingushetia and Chechnya. Islamist separatist groups from these areas have used "the woman-delivered weapon" in previous attacks on Russian...

At least 25 people are reported to have been killed in an explosion on the Metro system in central Moscow, with a second blast coming shortly afterwards. The first blast happened at the city's central Lubyanka station, reports quoting security sources said. A second explosion happened at the Park Kultury station, Russian news agency Tass reported. Ten people were injured in the first blast, Tass said, quoting the emergencies ministry. The number of casualties at the second blast is not yet clear.

A US warship arrived in Georgia's Black Sea waters Thursday for exercises with the country's coast guard, the US embassy said, in the latest of a series of such visits that have infuriated Russia. The USS John L. Hall guided-missile frigate arrived in the vicinity of the Georgian port of Poti, an embassy spokesman said, about 30 kilometres (19 miles) from the de facto border with the Russian-backed breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia. "The aim of the visit is to conduct joint exercises with the Georgian coast guard," said the embassy spokesman, who declined to be named. He said the...

Russia secured on 17 February the right to maintain a large, long-term military presence in the Georgian rebel region of Abkhazia, signing a deal for a military base that was condemned by Tbilisi and the West. The base will accommodate at least 3,000 Russian land troops, already stationed in Abkhazia, for at least 49 years, Abkhaz officials said. "This agreement creates a foundation for the development of Abkhazia as an independent state," Medvedev said at a signing ceremony in the Great Kremlin Palace. Moscow recognised Abkhazia in August 2008 after crushing an assault by US ally Georgia on another pro-Russian...

NATO on Wednesday denounced as "invalid" a Russian pact establishing a military base in the rebel Georgian region of Abkhazia, urging Moscow to revoke it. "NATO considers invalid agreements between Russia and the (Georgian) territories," which its 28 member nations do not recognise, alliance spokeswoman Carmen Romero said. The Russian-Abkhaz deal, signed in Moscow Wednesday during an elaborate "state visit" by rebel leader Sergei Bagapsh, builds on previous agreements allowing Russia to maintain thousands of troops and border guards in Abkhazia. The base pact allows Russian forces "to defend the sovereignty and safety of the republic jointly with the armed...

Ramzan Kadyrov, a 33-year-old former rebel turned Kremlin loyalist, said that last year's attack by Georgia, which is a US ally, on the pro-Russian rebel region of South Ossetia was part of a Western plot to seize the whole Caucasus region. "If they get control of the Caucasus, you could say they'll get control of virtually all of Russia, because the Caucasus is our backbone," Kadyrov said. .... "The Russian government needs to work out a strategy, it needs to attack," the Chechen president said. "...Georgia, South Ossetia, Ukraine, all this will go on and on. It's Russia's private affliction....

Hardline Kremlin-backed leader Ramzan Kadyrov is vying with insurgents for authority in a land ravaged by two secessionist wars with Moscow. Each side is claiming Islam as its flag of legitimacy, each reviles the other as criminal and blasphemous. Wary of the dangers of separatism in a vast country, Moscow watches uneasily as central power yields to Islamic tenets. It must chose what it might see as the lesser of two evils. Though polygamy is illegal in Russia, the southern Muslim region of Chechnya encourages the practice, arguing it is allowed by sharia law and the Koran, Islam's holiest book....

The newly re-elected president of Abkhazia, an unrecognized breakaway region of Georgia, Sergei Bagapsh will pay a visit to Turkey soon, citing the need to reach out to members of the Abkhaz diaspora currently living in the country. At a press conference following his landslide victory in the Abkhaz presidential elections, which Georgia labeled an “immoral comedy,” Bagapsh said he plans to make an informal trip to Turkey very soon. “I will have informal meetings with Turkish officials,” Bagapsh said. Abkhazia has been a battleground for Russia since the August 2008 war between Russia and Georgia over the disputed region...

YEREVAN -- Two leaders of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation party (Dashnaktsutyun) have criticized Russian policy toward Turkey and Azerbaijan, RFE/RL's Armenian Service reports. Vahan Hovannisian, a senior Dashnaktsutyun lawyer, said that Russian policy toward the South Caucasus is "dangerous" for Armenia. Hovannisian did not elaborate on his statement. Another Dashnaktsutyun leader, Hrayr Karapetian, who heads the parliament's defense and security committee, said Russia's deepening military cooperation with Turkey and Azerbaijan runs counter to its military alliance with Armenia. Karapetian said a 2010 plan for joint military exercises signed by Azerbaijani and Russian defense ministers is "at the least, strange and...

In the Caucasus Mountains along Russia's southern fringe, a hidden war is escalating. Moscow says it's battling militant Islam in the tiny republic of Ingushetia. But people here say hundreds of innocent civilians are being tortured and murdered. REPORTER: He says, "We can no longer walk. "Our teeth have been broken, our jaws are broken. "We desperately need some help." They say they live in terror of a Russian security apparatus out of control. We arrived in Nazran, the largest town in the mainly Muslim Russian Republic of Ingushetia. We were taken to a house, where we were met by...

HILLARY CLINTON’S words of support for Georgia during her visit this week to Moscow did little to calm fears in Tbilisi about Russia’s intentions in the turbulent Caucasus mountains. Two of Russia’s most powerful men sent shivers through Tbilisi during the US secretary of state’s stay in Moscow, with statements that fuelled worries the Kremlin’s fight with rebels in its own restive Caucasus republics could spill into neighbouring Georgia. The struggle between Moscow’s security forces and militants, once confined to Chechnya, is equally intense in two other Russian regions, Dagestan and Ingushetia, where police and soldiers come under daily attack...

A recent report of an ancient textile facility, of sorts, is turning heads.[1] Sifting through the debris on a cave floor in the Republic of Georgia, scientists recently discovered evidence that the early cave dwellers processed textiles in the cave. While searching for ancient pollen grains, they found tiny flax fibers in the dirt. Some of these fibers were woven, some were cut, and some were dyed black, gray, turquoise, or pink. They also discovered evidence that these people were processing fur (for clothing) and animal hides. What is surprising about the find is that this was supposedly happening 30,000...

CAIRO, Sept 2 (Reuters) - Ankara will pressure Tbilisi to overturn a Georgian court decision to imprison a Turkish tanker captain for trying to deliver fuel to rebel Abkhazia, violating an economic blockade, a government source said on Wednesday. Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu is expected to visit Tbilisi to ask Georgia to overturn the decision to jail the captain for 24 years after his ship was seized in the Black Sea by the Georgian Coast Guard. Georgian authorities say the ship was seized in Georgian waters, but the tanker operator says the vessel was seized in international waters at gunpoint....

One of the biggest myths perpetuated by Vladimir Putin's propaganda machine is that during his 10-year rule over Russia, the former president and current prime minister succeeded in "pacifying" the North Caucasus. Nothing could be further from the truth. What we are witnessing today is the start of the third Caucasus war in 15 years, following the two Chechen wars of 1994 and 1999. There was the June 22 attack on Ingushetia's president Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, the recent murders of Chechen human rights activists Natalia Estemirova and Zarema Sadulaeva, and last week's terrorist attack in Nazran, which killed scores and maimed...

Moscow (AsiaNews / Agencies) – The Russian Islamic University, inaugurated in Grozny, on August 21 is called Kunta-Haji, in honor the Sufi mystic who in the mid nineteenth century preached non-violence in Chechnya. The ceremony was opened by a video message in which Vladimir Putin, the Russian premier said: "There are three million Muslims in our country and they all consider Russia as their home, their mother country and we welcome the recovery Islamic traditions". The words of the Prime Minister in Moscow echoed those of Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya's president, who announced a future for the country without the influence...

Vienna, August 18 – Ingushetia President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov says that the United States, the United Kingdom and Israel are behind efforts to destabilize the North Caucasus but that they will not succeed and that region will remain part of the Russian Federation for more than the next 100 years. In an interview published in yesterday’s “Komsomolskaya Pravda,” Yevkurov, who has just been released from a Moscow hospital following a June 22 assassination attempt against him, made a number of comments which provide clues as to the approach he is likely to pursue now that he has returned to work (www.kp.ru/daily/24343.5/534268/)....

SUKHUMI, August 18 (RIA Novosti) - The Abkhazian president appealed to the UN Security Council and the European Union on Tuesday over the seizure by Georgia of a Turkish tanker carrying fuel to the former Georgian republic. "On August 16, 2009, Georgian patrol officers seized a commercial vessel en route from Turkey to Abkhazia again. This was the third incident of Georgian piracy this year," Sergei Bagapsh said in a statement. The Turkish Buket vessel was delivering over 3,000 metric tons of gasoline and 775 metric tons of diesel to Abkhazia, when the incident occurred. Tbilisi, which considers Abkhazia to...

Note: The following blog entry is a quote: Speaker At Hizb Al-Tahrir Conference In Lebanon Calls For Jihad In Cyprus, Balkans, Caucasus At the annual conference of the Islamist organization Hizb Al-Tahrir in Lebanon, on the subject of jihad, organization member Sheikh Adnan Mizyan said yesterday that in light of the fact that many countries of Muslims are today under occupation, including Palestine, Iraq, Cyprus, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Afghanistan, and Kashmir, the Islamic ummah must take jihad measures in order to free them. Source: Al-Safir, Lebanon, July 20, 2009 Posted at: 2009-07-20

One of the last acts of Natalia Estemirova, the human rights activist who was abducted and found murdered on Wednesday in Ingushetia, was to document the killing of a Chechen villager shot for allegedly giving a sheep to rebels. These two murders add to a fresh surge of violence across RussiaÂ’s north Caucasus, which is setting off a powder keg of Islamic extremism, top-level vested interest, interclan rivalry, traditions of vengeance and ingrained suspicion of the behaviour of human rights activists. The stability of the region is deteriorating, nearly a year after Russia attacked Georgia over the breakaway republics of...

After visiting breakaway South Ossetia on July 13 and Russian troops based deep inside Georgia, President Dmitry Medvedev traveled to Novorossiysk to inspect Russia's main deepwater Black Sea port and nearby military facilities. Medvedev visited the Black Sea fleet flagship cruiser Moskva, attended a meeting of the military top brass and inspected troops in the 7th airborne (VDV) division based in Novorossiysk (RIA Novosti, July 14). Russian President Dmitry Medvedev talks to 7-th Airborne Assault Division soldiers at the Rayevsky firing range in Novorossiysk on July 14, 2009 In South Ossetia Medvedev visited the Russian military HQ and base in...

MOSCOW -- Undeterred by the global slowdown, Russia's state-run energy leviathan Gazprom has pushed ahead with an expansion masterplan of huge ambition that has raised questions over its true motives. Gazprom chief executive Alexei Miller has warned Europe — keen to break Russia's stronghold on gas supplies — against turning the issue of energy diversification into a “fetish.” But analysts say it is the Russian gas giant's own actions that are now bordering on the abnormal, with deals often being motivated by factors like politics or pride rather than economic sense. “Gazprom has acquired the function of the foreign energy...

I'll be on hiatus into July after this. So I looked for some waterfall pictures as a send-off. Waterfall in the Caucasus Mountains (Chegem Gorge). Click for full-size. Katibawasan Falls, Phillipines (click for full size) El Chorro waterfalls, El Salvador

MOSCOW - Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov said he had been ordered by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to fight insurgents in the neighboring region of Ingushetia after its leader was gravely wounded in a bomb attack. Kadyrov's harsh tactics have brought relative stability to Chechnya since he was elected in 2007 after more than a decade of war. But fellow Kremlin appointees have failed to stem spikes in violence in neighboring Dagestan and Ingushetia. With Ingush President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov fighting for his life in hospital, Kadyrov said he had been ordered by Medvedev to run cross-border operations. "He told me to...

NAZRAN, Russia -- Gunmen killed a former top government minister in Ingushetia as he stood outside his home in the violent southern Russian region Saturday, law enforcement officials said. .... Two gunmen sprayed Aushev with automatic weapon fire as he got out of his car at the gate outside his home in the region's main city, Nazran, around 6:30 p.m. (1430 GMT), the regional Interior Ministry's press service said. He died en route to the hospital. Aushev was vice premier under former Ingush President Murat Zyazikov, a KGB agent who was widely reviled by many Ingush for his repressive policies....

The deputy head of Ingushetia's Supreme Court has been shot dead in the latest incident of violence to hit Russia's troubled Caucasus region. The assassination of Justice Aza Gazgireeva follows a recent high profile killing in neighboring Dagestan, where Russian President Dmitri Medvedev has warned that poverty, unemployment, and massive corruption are undermining government authority. Deputy Chief Justice of Ingushetia's Supreme Court, Aza Gazgireeva, was killed after gunmen opened fire on her chauffer-driven van in the republic's biggest city, Nazran. Russian TV reports say one of the assassin's then walked up to Gazgireeva's body and shot her in the head....

The head of the interior ministry in Russia's turbulent Dagestan region was on Friday shot dead by a sniper while leaving a wedding party, investigators said. The head of the ministry's logistics unit was also killed in the attack and a third officer was injured, the investigative committee of the Russian prosecutor general's office said in a statement. Hospital officials said a fourth officer was also seriously injured. The minister, Lieutenant General Adilgerei Magomedtagirov, died when a sniper opened fire from a building overlooking a restaurant where he was attending the wedding of a colleague's daughter. The bride's father was...

Russia is concerned over Armenia’s participation in NATO military trainings in Georgia, especially, considering the anti-Russian nature of trainings planned, RF MP Semen Baghdasarov said at TV space bridge entitled “Armenia-Turkey: Progress in bilateral relations or geopolitical games of world powers?”. “As CSTO member, and military and strategic partner of Russia, Armenia has to refuse from participating in these trainings, like a number of other post soviet countries did,” RF MP noted. According to him, Armenia has to remember that the West has never supported Armenian people’s interests. “A search for new allies is in process in Armenia, and Russia...

Seven Georgian monastics were forced to leave the territory of Abkhazia by separatist forces on April 2-3. Representatives of the breakaway region had accused them of “politicking.” The three monks and four nuns were from the Saint Giorgi Monastery in the village of Azhara, located in the Kodori Gorge, the only part of Abkhazia that was controlled by the central Georgian Government before the August Russian-Georgian conflict. When Georgian troops were driven out of the area the monastery and its residents stayed. “[After the August conflict] we proposed to the Georgian ‘priests’ that they accept the regulations of the Abkhazian...

Vladimir Radchenko’s first day on the job as acting chief tax inspector for Dagestan, a region in southern Russia, did not go smoothly. As he stepped into the office on February 6, he was confronted by the son of the president of the autonomous republic, escorted from the building by two men with pistols, stuffed into a car, driven around the capital city for an hour and threatened with death if he ever set foot in the region again. And that was just the start of a very bad week. A lesser bureaucrat, faced with the same, would likely have...

MAKHACHKALA, Russia (AP) - Security forces battled gunmen holed up in a mountainous forest east of Chechnya for a second day Friday and at least five officers were killed, regional officials said. An unknown number of militants were also killed. The fighting in the southern districts of Dagestan was some of the fiercest to hit the poor, volatile North Caucasus republic in years. State-run TV showed dozens of members of the security forces and vehicles perched on hillsides outside the Karabudakhkentsky district village of Kakashura. Helicopter gunships were shown firing missiles into a forest where police said between 10 and...

Analysts say Islamist extremists have infiltrated the region and that worsening poverty may drive people towards the rebels who have previously sent kidnappers and suicide bombers to attack Russian cities. Financial support is a tool for the Kremlin to dampen support for the rebels but Russia's cash reserves have shrunk by some 40 percent to about $385 billion (270 billion pounds) since last summer. In Russia's original budget for 2009, Chechnya's government said it had been promised around 24.5 billion roubles (474 million pounds) -- worth about $1 billion before the currency devalued by about a third. The other North...

Officials in the restive Russian republic of Ingushetia say four police and three insurgents have died in a clash in the republic's principal city. The clash in Nazran ended when the house where the rebels were holed up exploded, a blast apparently set off by the fighters. The regional Interior Ministry says the four police were killed in gunfire Thursday with the insurgents and that one of the insurgents died in the crossfire. The bodies of two other fighters were found in the rubble of the exploded house, according to Russian news reports citing ministry officials.

The air force chief of Azerbaijan, an oil producing state in the fragile southern Caucasus region, was shot dead outside his home on Wednesday, officials said. General-Lieutenant Rail Rzayev was the most senior official to have been killed in ex-Soviet Azerbaijan, a country where Russia and the United States vie for influence, since the 1990s. It was not immediately clear whether the motives for the killing were political. "At approximately 8 a.m. (0400 GMT) at the entrance to his home the head of the air force and missile defense system was shot in the head and later died of his...