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RUSSIAN investigators have confirmed that the derailment of a passenger train which killed dozens of people was caused by a "terrorist attack", the Interfax news agency reported. "We are indeed talking about a terrorist attack," Vladimir Markin, spokesman for Russia's federal investigative committee... Investigators have found "elements of an explosive device" at the site...

Few places on earth have been as systematically brutalized over the past decade as Chechnya. So you might have thought that the Russian government's decision last week to declare an end to its "counterterrorism" operations in the territory would have been an occasion for somber reflection in the Western media. Forget it. It's a 600-word news item at best. Here's a contrast to ponder. Since the beginning of the second intifada in the autumn of 2000, roughly 6,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire. That figure includes combatants, as well as those killed in January's fighting in Gaza. As...

ANOTHER RUSSIAN fighting for human rights and the rule of law has been murdered in Vladimir Putin's Moscow. Stanislav Markelov, a lawyer who defended Chechens brutalized by Russian troops and journalists who wrote about the abuses, was shot in the head yesterday by a masked man carrying a silencer-equipped pistol. An opposition journalist who tried to intervene, Anastasia Baburova, was also fatally shot in the head. This occurred in broad daylight, on a busy street in central Moscow less than half a mile from the Kremlin. It was another demonstration that assassinations are a dominating feature of political life under...

The Kremlin's decision to recognise the independence of two breakaway regions of neighbouring Georgia has prompted some people inside Russia's own borders to ask: why can we not have independence too? The recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia risks starting a "domino effect," re-awakening separatist sentiments in Chechnya and other parts of the turbulent North Caucasus where Russia has been fighting to contain rebellions. ... Russia's FSB domestic security service said last week it expected a surge in activity by separatist and Islamist militants in the North Caucasus. "DOUBLE STANDARDS" Some Chechens expressed bitterness on Wednesday that Russia had backed...

Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov has dismissed former Vostok battalion leader Sulim Yamadayev, a powerful former Chechen rebel at odds with Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, after he fought Georgian troops in South Ossetia, a source in the Chechen administration said Friday. Serdyukov signed an order discharging Yamadayev, who had a federal warrant out for his arrest on murder charges but, in murky circumstances, ended up fighting with Russian troops in their defeat of Georgian forces over control of Tskhinvali, said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue with the media. The order...

ANKISI GORGE, Georgia, June 11 — For months, local residents say, the group of 15 Arab and Central Asian fighters lived quietly in a two-story house here, among the hundreds of guerrillas who had turned this wooded vale near the Russian border into a burgeoning center of Islamic militancy. Like many of those who gathered here, the fighters had come over the snowy passes from Chechnya, where they had been helping their fellow Muslims in their struggle to break with the Russian republic. They exercised to stay in shape and went into the woods to practice shooting. Some of the...

OVER the weekend, photographic proof emerged that the Russians used mur derous Chechen mercenaries to do their dirtiest dirty work in Georgia: The ragtag unit in question is so vicious that, last April, Chechnya's Russian-installed "president" demanded it be disbanded. War snaps taken by Russian photojournalist Arkady Babchenko have been circulating among intelligence personnel. The shots reveal far more to the West than Babchenko realized. Amid photos of the horrors of war, grateful South Ossetians and triumphant Russian troops, one series leapt out at me as a former intel officer: Bearded irregulars riding atop Russian-built armored vehicles (old BMPs, for...

Russian paramilitaries on the road towards Tbilisi. The Russian army left Gori in convoy and stopped about 30 miles from the city. The first armoured personnel carrier nudged past the top of the hill. It paused as if getting its bearings, and then set off towards Tbilisi. Behind it, an endless column of Russian military vehicles appeared on a shimmering horizon - trucks, tankers, and a beaten-up Nissan. ..................................... Where was he from? "Chechnya. We've come here to help," he said. For the terrified residents of Gori and surrounding villages, it didn't seem like help. Yesterday morning, as the...

Kadyrov decided to make a suitable contribution to the anti-Georgian campaign which in Russia has acquired the character of a mass psychosis. The head of Chechnya would not be worthy of the name if he did not outdo in extravagance and hooliganism the Georgian leadership’s most savage critic, Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Back in his native village of Khosi-Yurt, Kadyrov assembled journalists and made several statements. He proposed that Mikheil Saakashvili be sent to the Beijing Olympics as a sprinter, with the explanation that when hiding from a Russian jet fighter the Georgian president had managed to do so with unbelievable swiftness....

Villages in Georgia were being burned and looted as Russian tanks followed by "irregulars" advanced from the breakaway province of South Ossetia, eyewitnesses said today. "People are fleeing, there is a mood of absolute panic. The idea there is a ceasefire is ridiculous," Luke Harding, the Guardian's correspondent, said. Russia denied any advance, however Georgian authorities claimed that about 50 tanks and armoured vehicles were near the strategically important town of Gori. Harding, watching villages near Gori burn, said witnesses had told him Russian military, including at least 25 tanks, had moved from the Russian-controlled South Ossetia into the villages....

The use of units comprised of ethnic Chechens to do much of the very dirty work in Georgia. The nickname [‘Shrek’] given by his comrades to the bald, pug-eared soldier was the only moment of light relief during a day of tense drama in which The Times witnessed Russia breaching the ceasefire agreement over South Ossetia at will. At a checkpoint set up by the Russian Army on the approach to the city of Gori from the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, an armoured personnel carrier blocked the road and riflemen had fanned out in the surrounding bushes, their weapons trained on...

" OSLO (Reuters) - Twenty-three people were wounded when a gang of 40-50 men armed with steel bars and machetes attacked residents at a refugee centre in Norway late on Thursday, officials said on Friday. No one was seriously wounded, but 10 were sent to hospital and 13 treated at a local clinic, hospital officials said. An official at the centre in Oestfold south of Oslo said the attackers were Chechens and the victims Kurds. Police declined to confirm or deny that and said they had made no arrests so far. "There was an attack from outside the asylum centre...

GROZNY. April 27 (Interfax-AVN) - According to preliminary information, 17 people were killed in a crash of an Mi-8 helicopter carrying a landing party in southern Chechnya, a source in the headquarters of the joint group of forces in the North Caucasus told Interfax-AVN on Friday. "Three crewmembers and 14 soldiers died. According to preliminary information, the helicopter was hit from the ground," the source said. A special operation to eliminate an illegal armed group has been under way to the south from the Shatoi town. Three Mi-8 helicopters with landing parties were sent to the district. One of...

1/18/2006 7:31:21 PM *Movaldi Baisarov, Former Head Of One Of Chechnya's Shadowy Security Forces, Was Fatally Shot Down By Law Enforcement Officers

Hundreds of Chechens forced to flee Russian town as restaurant brawl erupts into race riot · Xenophobic groups use fight to urge ethnic attacks· Minorities targeted in internet campaign Tom Parfitt in Moscow Tuesday September 5, 2006 The Guardian UK Several hundred Chechens and dark-skinned people from the Caucasus have been forced to flee a town in north-west Russia after a brawl in a restaurant prompted a race riot at the weekend. The exodus of minorities from Kondopoga in the Karelia region near the border with Finland follows events on Saturday when a mob rampaged through the town and burned...

The rally last December was one of nearly a dozen paid-for protests organized by Russian émigrés in the U.S. in the past two years. They spent $150,000 to $200,000 in some months, accounting records indicate, to rally thousands of demonstrators near spots such as United Nations headquarters and the World Trade Center site. State-controlled Russian television, whose content is closely guided by Kremlin handlers, covered some of the events, often as the only news organ present, showing video of them on the evening news back home. Boris Barshevsky at a pay-for-protest rally in Queens, N.Y., last year. Organizers said the...

ALARM - The "President" Independence Killed tchetchene GROZNY (Russia) - the "president" autoproclamé of the independence rebels tchetchenes, Abdoul-Khalim Saïdoullaïev, was killed, announced to Saturday with AFP a person in charge for the government tchetchene pro-Russian.

Hamid Mir truly has deep access inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. He is best known as the last journalist to interview Osama Bin Laden, and the only one to do so after the attacks of September 11, 2001. He is currently the Bureau Chief of Islamabad for Geo TV and is writing a biography on Osama Bin Laden. He has interviewed countless members of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in many countries over the years. HM: I don’t think that Iraq had any direct link with Al-Qaeda. Saddam tried to contact Osama Bin Laden in 1998 but he was not entertained....

The pending appeal of the President of South Ossetia, Eduard Kokoity, to the Russian Federation's Constitutional Court may trigger a destabilizing chain of events in the Caucasus. Kokoity, who is totally dependent on the Kremlin, would not have asked for such a radical step if he wasn't encouraged from the highest level in Moscow. If such developments spin out of control, they can cause a Russian-Georgian military confrontation with unpredictable consequences for the region and the world. My recent meetings in Moscow and Washington indicate that Russian-Georgian relations have deteriorated to the point where some officials in the Kremlin are...

MIRAN SHAH, Pakistan (AP) - Pakistani security forces struck a militant training camp Wednesday in a tribal region near the Afghan border, killing three dozen fighters, including a Chechen commander linked to al-Qaida, an army official said. One civilian and a soldier were also reported dead. The raid came just days before a visit by President Bush to Pakistan during which the fight against al-Qaida and the Taliban will be on the agenda. The militants were attacked after conducting a raid inside Afghanistan and re-entering Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal region, where their camp was located. Three helicopter gunships attacked their...

Government officials are circulating a document showing Hamas's links to Chechen terrorists in an attempt to influence Russian public opinion against President Vladimir Putin's overtures to Hamas. The pamphlet, put out by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Center for Special Studies, an information project sponsored by an NGO set up in memory of fallen members of the Israeli intelligence community, opens by stating that "Hamas support for the Chechen separatists and their terrorist tactics did not prevent it from immediately accepting" Putin's recent invitation to visit Moscow. According to the document, Hamas "is completely hostile to the...

Russian President Vladimir Putin invited Leaders of the Palestinian organization Hamas to Moscow yesterday. He took that step in the Cortes Generales Senate of Spain, where he told members why he does not consider Hamas a terrorist organization, but does consider Chechen rebels terrorists. Kommersant special correspondent Andrey Kolesnikov has the details on his comments and on what happened to Antonio Valdez Garcia, who disappeared in Moscow. Yesterday morning, Vladimir Putin visited the Spanish senate. He and the senate members recalled the Spanish children who came to Moscow from Spain to avoid the civil war in 1936. “We called them...

Russian President Vladimir Putin said during a Madrid press conference Thursday that Russia is holding talks with Hamas and that he plans on inviting the group’s leaders to Moscow soon. Hamas rose to power in democratic elections and the choice of the Palestinian people must be respected, Putin said. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was quick to accept the invitation. However, a document distributed by the Israeli Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Center for Special Studies reveals that Hamas supports the Chechen rebels in their battle for independence against the Russian regime and considers them part of the global...

A Taliban spokesman Dr. Hanif told that the Taliban blew up a US tank in Manogai district of Kunar Province yesterday with a remote control landmine that resulted in killing of four US troops. However, the US official denied about happening of such incident. The Marines may have some LAV-25's While in another incident two puppet Karzay troops killed and six captured by the Taliban during their attack on a check post of Karzay formation in Sikin district of Paktika Province, Dr. Hanif claimed. Two US tanks destroyed in a landmine blast by killing all those on board the tank...

GENEVA, Dec 13 (UNHCR) – WARSAW, Poland, Dec 13 (UNHCR) - A hunger strike in a reception centre for asylum seekers near Warsaw, which has just ended, highlighted the asylum problems facing Poland and other new European Union countries, and emphasised the need for a better system for burden-sharing among EU countries. For almost two weeks, a group of 200 asylum seekers at Debak reception centre near the Polish capital refused to collect meals from the centre's canteen. "We demand that Poland opens safe passage to Western Europe," wrote the protesters in a petition against their living conditions. "There is...

Polish Police Accused Of Beating Chechen Refugees 13 December 2005 -- Chechen pro-independence media today slammed Polish law enforcement agencies for allegedly raiding a reception center for Chechen asylum seekers in the eastern city of Lublin. The Western-based Kavkaz-Tsenter and Daymokh information websites said the incident occurred on 11 December. They claim Polish special police forces beat up asylum seekers after cordoning off the premises. When they eventually left, the security forces allegedly hauled away three men. The websites quote eyewitnesses as saying police claimed they were looking for explosives intended for terrorist attacks in Poland. Polish authorities have not...

Poland: Chechen Refugees Grateful for Protection but Need Integration Support Civilians continue to flee ongoing violence and suffering in Chechnya. Asylum seekers who are able to make it out say they are thankful for Poland’s open door policy, and the country is certainly to be commended for extending its arm of protection to them. Once the immediate safety of these individuals has been realized, however, they need help restarting their lives in a new country. Chechnya declared independence in 1991. Within a few years, conflict between federal forces and secessionist armed groups had displaced over 250,000 people to other parts...

For Chechens, Poland is not west enough 05 Dec 2005 16:59:38 GMT Source: UN High Commissioner for Refugees WARSAW, December 5 (UNHCR) – Shema drags her teenage daughter down the stairs together with the wheelchair. They live on the second floor of a reception centre for asylum seekers in Poland. There is no lift, so the tiny, grey-haired lady in her forties fights with the wheelchair twice a day, up and down the stairs, to get her daughter some fresh air. "I have one dream: to get the girl on her feet," Shema says. "I know some people who had...

AUSTRALIA faces new terrorist threats from a radical group that has only this week been identified by ASIO, according to intelligence sources. The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation is investigating the new terrorist cell. It is said to be planning attacks - designed to cause mass casualties - in Melbourne and Sydney. Sources say security services were surprised by revelations of the group's existence. The group is believed to be made up of Australian-born children of Muslim immigrants. An intelligence source said: "This is a disturbing development. "This new group appears to have been planning or considering carrying out extremely violent...

An Islamic terror cell has smuggled two surface-to-air missiles into Europe in a plot to shoot down planes at one of France's main airports, it was claimed Friday. French and Algerian extremists with links to al-Qaeda bought the Russian SA-18 Grouse missiles from Chechens in 2002 and smuggled them via Georgia and Turkey, according to French anti-terror sources quoted in Le Figaro. French anti-terrorism investigators learned of the missile terror plan while interrogating a Jordanian al-Qa'eda operative close to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of the Islamic terror group in Iraq.

CHISINAU. Oct 27 (Interfax) - Moldovan Prime Minister Vasile Tarlev thinks that armaments from Russian stockpiles in Transdniestria might have been shipped to Chechen militants and, probably, Beslan. "Unfortunately, as far as we know, some armaments from the Russian depots in Transdniestria have been sent to Chechnya and some allegedly went to militants in Beslan," he told the Russian press in Chisinau on Thursday. "We must finally eliminate this source of arms for separatists and terrorists," he said.

MOSCOW. Oct 14 (Interfax) - Russia expressed anger on Friday because British media allowed Chechen separatist envoy Akhmed Zakayev, who has political asylum in the UK, to voice "public support" for Thursday's attack by militants on Nalchik, the capital of the Russian region of Kabardino-Balkaria. "This propagandist of terrorism, this terrorist instigator again expressed public support for terror, for the barbaric actions of the militants in Kabardino-Balkaria. Once again, he openly and blatantly called for violence, for killing Russian civilians," Anatoly Safonov, the Russian presidential envoy for international cooperation in combating terrorism, said in a commentary on the Russian Foreign...

<p>Thousands of people have been abducted by the war-torn republic's kidnapping machine. Tales of the survivors read like relics from a barbaric past.</p> <p>NALCHIK, Russia--As awkwardly as a newborn foal struggling on spindly legs, Lena Meshcheryakova is learning how to curl her lips up at the corners to make a smile.</p>

About 60 people have been shot dead in gun battles around a school and airport in southern Russia. Chechen rebels have claimed on a web site that they were behind the attacks in the region of Kabardino-Balkariya this morning. Most of the victims are reported to have been rebels, though 12 people living in the town of Nalchik are said to have been killed. The gunmen have also stormed a police station and taken hostages, Dmitry Kozak, the Kremlin envoy to southern Russia, told state television. Efforts were underway to free them, he said. "These were meticulously planned and synchronised...

HAMBURG, Aug 26: Three Chechen men who sparked a massive police search in the northern German city of Hamburg after being overheard allegedly planning an attack are in custody, authorities said on Friday. Hamburg police chief Reinhard Chedor said one of the men was arrested and the other two had turned themselves in. “I do not believe at the moment that there were any real plans for an attack,” Chedor told a press conference. The men are aged from 21 to 25. Chedor said he was convinced that the three were the suspects caught on film by a surveillance camera...

Officers of the Ukrainian Security Service for south-central Kirovograd region, with assistance of their Transcarpathian colleagues, have revealed an illegal channel of trafficking a Chechens group from Russia into Slovakia through Ukraine, UNIAN reported. A head of the press service of the SSU's Kirovograd Region, Fedor Shepel, told journalists that one of the transshipment points for the illegal group was situated in Aleksandria, Kirovograd region. He added that both the Chechens and their guides had been arrested and are to be charged with crossing the Ukrainian state border illegally, Mosnews reported. Shepel declined to name the exact number of the...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev said on Tuesday Olympic athletes would be at risk from his forces' attacks if the Russian capital won the right to hold the 2012 Games. "No one could guarantee the athletes' security, even if our forces conducted extremely careful strikes on Moscow. But there should be no doubt that we have bombed and will bomb Moscow," he said in a statement on a rebel Web site (www.kavkazcenter.com).

300,000 Killed in Chechen Wars — Pro-Moscow Official About 300,000 people have been killed during two wars in Chechnya over the past decade, a senior official in the province’s Moscow-backed government said Sunday. Dukvakha Abdurakhmanov, a deputy prime minister in the Kremlin-controlled Chechen civilian administration, also said that more than 200,000 people have gone missing. Abdurakhmanov’s claim could not be independently verified, The Associated Press reported. The Russian government has not revealed any casualties among civilians in Chechnya during the two wars in the region since 1994. Casualty estimates vary widely, but many say about 80,000 civilians — 40 percent...

Russians blame Chechen for US editor's murder Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow Friday June 17, 2005 The Guardian Russian prosecutors say the murder of an American journalist, Paul Klebnikov, shot dead in Moscow last year, was ordered by a Chechen separatist angered by the reporter's negative portrayal of him - and have declared the case closed. Khodzh-Ahmed Nukhayev, a former official in the separatist government, paid a gang of Chechens to kill Mr Klebnikov because of a 2003 book critical of Mr Nukhayev, the prosecutor's office said yesterday. The killing highlighted the dangers faced in Russia by investigative journalists, who...

AMSTERDAM — Two Chechen men have been arrested in recent weeks in connection with inquiries into the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh. French police arrested 25-year-old Bislan I. at the request of Dutch justice officials earlier this month. His fingerprint was allegedly found on a document among the belongings of Mohammed B., the man who has confessed to Van Gogh's murder. Another Chechen man was arrested mid-April, the Public Prosecutor's Office (OM) in Amsterdam revealed on Thursday. Marat J., 22, was arrested in Schiedam. Originally from the Chechen capital Grozny, J.'s fingerprints were allegedly discovered on a cassette...

MOSCOW, May 3 (Itar-Tass) - Lithuanian border guards detained on Monday a group of Chechens crossing into Lithuania from Belarus. Thee men, two women and six young children tried to cross the border, border service department official Gedrus Mishutis told Itar-Tass on Tuesday. He denied the media reports alleging that the detained Chechens asked Lithuanian authorities for temporary asylum. The investigation has been begun into the three men who were placed in a detention ward. A large sum of the foreign currency was found on them during the detention. The women and children were accommodated at centre of refugee registration...

MOSCOW. March 23 (Interfax) - Chechen President Alu Alkhanov has criticized the Warsaw authorities' intention to name one of the city squares after Chechen separatist leader Dzhokhar Dudayev. "This indicates the absolute ignorance of the role that Dzhokhar Dudayev played in the fate of the Chechen people and absolute indifference to the Chechen republic's fate," Alkhanov said at a press conference at the Interfax main office on Wednesday. "The so-called national patriot Dzhokhar Dudayev was exactly the man who overthrew the legitimate authorities in the Chechen-Ingush republic and started a criminal policy in relation to his own people," he said.

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Russia faces renewed attacks from Chechen rebels after its security forces killed moderate leader Aslan Maskhadov, guerrilla warlord Shamil Basayev has warned in an interview published by Swedish TT news agency. Basayev, blamed by Moscow for a series of bloody strikes against civilian targets including last September's Beslan school massacre, said he was no longer bound by a commitment to peace he had given former Chechen leader Maskhadov. Russian security forces killed Maskhadov on March 8. "Nobody can prevent me from responding to violence with violence," TT quoted Basayev as saying in written replies to questions...

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan will hunt down a former Guantanamo Bay inmate who masterminded the abduction of two Chinese engineers, one of whom died after a rescue operation in which five kidnappers were killed, officials said Friday. Al Qaeda-linked tribesman Abdullah Mehsud directed the six-day hostage drama -- which caused consternation in key ally China -- from a hideout in the hills of the South Waziristan tribal region along the border with Afghanistan, they said. After Pakistani commandos killed the kidnappers in the nearby Chagmalai area Thursday, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf promised Chinese President Hu Jintao the masterminds would be...

Boris Berezovsky has claimed that Chechen rebels possess a nuclear weapon. “It is a small portable device which had not been used until now for only one reason: because some necessary element was missing,” the exiled Russian oligarch told Komsomolskaya Pravda, citing “credible sources.” Berezovsky said he wrote a letter to Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) about this danger last autumn. Asked to respond to Berezovsky's claims about a Chechen nuke, a security official told the newspaper, “We do not believe it necessary to comment on statements, especially delirious ones, made by people who are on the international wanted list.”...

NALCHIK, February 20 (Itar-Tass) - The gunmen, killed in Nalchik on Sunday, were members of armed gangs, subordinated to Basayev and Maskhadov, Russian Deputy Interior Minister Arkady Yedelev told reporters on Sunday. According to deputy minister, they are members of the Karachayevo-Cherkess jamaat and were on the federal Wanted List for committing terror acts in the Rostov Region and Stavropol Territory and were hatching new terror acts. In Yedelev’s words, new methods were used during the special operation: officially permitted Cheremukha-7 gas was used to neutralize the bandits who entrenched themselves in an apartment. “Gunmen suffered a serious blow”...

LONDON, England (AP) -- Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, who claimed responsibility for last year's brutal terrorist attack on a Russian school, was quoted as saying Thursday that the separatist rebels are planning more such operations. In an interview with Channel 4 News to be broadcast Thursday night, part of which was quoted in Thursday's Times of London newspaper, Basayev expressed regret for the hundreds of deaths in the June hostage-taking attack on the school in the Russian town of Beslan. But he blamed some of the deaths on flame-throwers used by Russian special forces who attacked the school to end...

New video has been released of the Beslan school siege showing the faces of the hostage takers for the first time. It also shows a negotiator talking to the terrorists as he tried to make a deal for a peaceful ending. The video comes as the families of victims continue a protest over the inquiry into the massacre. Around 100 angry parents from Beslan have blocked the motorway which passes through the town. Many have pitched tents across the road and are refusing to budge. They blame the authorities for allowing pro-Chechen gunmen to take over the school, saying...

MOSCOW : Russian security forces foiled a mass hostage-taking by pro-Chechen rebels in southern Russia on the scale of the bloody Beslan school hostage tragedy, media reported. A law enforcement source in Dagestan, which neighbours war-torn breakaway Chechnya, told the ITAR-TASS news agency that five militants cornered Saturday in an hours-long siege in the republic planned to seize a large number of hostages that day. Last September, almost 350 people -- half of them children -- were killed after gunmen linked to the independence war in Chechnya took over a school in the southern town of Beslan and Russian...

U.S. security officials are investigating a recent intelligence report that a group of 25 Chechen terrorists illegally entered the United States from Mexico in July. The Chechen group is suspected of having links to Islamist terrorists seeking to separate the southern enclave of Chechnya from Russia, according to officials familiar with intelligence reports. Members of the group, said to be wearing backpacks, secretly traveled to northern Mexico and crossed into a mountainous part of Arizona that is difficult for U.S. border security agents to monitor, said officials speaking on the condition of anonymity.