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Russian officials are blaming suicide bombers for twin attacks in the Republic of Dagestan, in the North Caucasus region, killing at least 13 people and wounded more than 100 others. Authorities said the first blast involved a car, which exploded as police approached it at a check point in Makhachkala, Dagestan's capital. The second explosion occurred as emergency responders arrived on the scene of the initial blast. The explosions ignited fires, which damaged several other vehicles. Police have been targets of similar attacks in Dagestan by Islamist insurgents. Last March, a double suicide bombing killed at least 40 people in...

The beach is crowded with men these days. Powerful, muscled Dagestani men, who practice martial arts and wrestle on the littered sand of the Caspian Sea shore in the capital city of Makhachkala. Some sit around, enjoying boiled ears of corn with butter and salt; others play soccer or ride on their buddies’ shoulders in the waves, competing to see who can last longest without collapsing into the water. Rare groups of shy women in long flannel dresses enter the sea holding children by the hand; their long skirts and colorful hijabs immediately soak up salty water, like sponges....

EXCLUSIVE Thursday, February 3rd, 2011 16:22 Life News has learned the name of the Domodedovo bomber Investigators were only able to identify the suicide bomber from fingerprints and a DNA analysis of his remains. Official representative of the Investigative Committee Vladimir Markin neither confirms nor denies the information. 36 human lives are on Magomed Yevloyev’s conscience. He was a student from Ingushetia who came under the influence of recruiters of the North Caucasus criminal underground. A hand and a scorched head are all that remain of the 20-year resident of the village of Ali-Yurt after he blew himself up in...

24-year-old Zeynap Suyunova, arrested in Volgograd and suspected of involvement in an explosion at a Moscow shooting club on December 31st, confessed to security services that her accomplices were planning two terrorist attacks in the capital - one of them at the airport, reports Life News. There is no official confirmation of this information. A day earlier the National Antiterrorism Committee would only state that interrogation of suspects in the shooting club blast had prevented of two terrorist attacks in Dagestan. According to the official version, the planned New Year’s Eve bombing in the capital and the attack on Domodedovo...

At least two people have been killed after a passenger plane skidded off the runway following an emergency landing at Moscow's Domodedovo airport. The Dagestan Airlines flight, with 155 passengers on board, was forced to land because its engines had reportedly cut out. Dozens of people were injured in the incident. It is not yet known what caused the engines to fail and an investigation has begun. The Russian-built Tu-154 took off at 11:07am (GMT) from Vnukovo Airport, just outside Moscow. It was heading to Makhachkala - the capital of the Republic of Dagestan. One engine failed on take-off, the...

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 young computer science student has been identified by her parents from a photograph of one of two suicide bombers who killed 40 people on the Moscow metro, a Russian newspaper reported on Sunday. The other woman behind the March 29 attacks has already been identified as the 17-year-old widow of an Islamist militant from the troubled Dagestan region in the North Caucasus. Rassoul Magomedov, whose family is also from Dagestan, recognised his 28-year-old daughter from a photograph published on the internet and sent to him by friends via his mobile phone, the Novaya Gazeta newspaper reported. "My wife and...

MAKHACHKALA, Russia (AP) - Russian officials say two suicide bombings in the southern province of Dagestan have killed at least nine people including two policemen. The incident comes two days after a twin suicide bombing tore through the Moscow subway, killing 39. A regional Interior Ministry spokesman told The Associated Press that the blasts occurred Wednesday morning in the town of Kizlyar, near Dagestan's border with Chechnya. Police pulled over a suspicious-looking car, when the driver detonated explosives. As police officers and residents gathered at the scene there was a second blast. Rebels from the North Caucasus, which includes Dagestan...

Gunmen killed a senior official from Dagestan in Moscow on Sunday, news agencies reported, the first in a recent series of violent attacks linked to the volatile North Caucasus region to reach the Russian capital. - A rise in suicide bombs and armed attacks on police and security forces in Chechnya, where Russia has fought two separatist wars, and in the neighbouring, mainly Muslim regions of Ingushetia and Dagestan, has shattered a few years of relative calm in the North Caucasus. Local leaders have warned Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that an Islamist uprising has permeated all spheres of society in...

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...

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....

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...

Moscow - Five people, including a senior official and a police man, were shot dead by gunmen in a roadside cafe in Russia's restive Caucasus region overnight Monday, Russian news agencies reported. The head of Dagestan's Untsukulsky district, Kazimbe Akhmedov, his two bodyguards, a local police officer and the director of a care home were killed in the attack. 'They were gunned down by two assailants dressed in camouflage and with masked faces,' a local Interior Ministry spokesman was quoted by news agency Interfax as saying on Monday. A police source was cited by Ria-Novosti as saying the group had...

MOSCOW, Dec 29 (Reuters) - A senior Russian officer was fatally wounded when his car came under fire in the Dagestan region of southern Russia on Monday, Russian news agencies reported. Major General Valery Lipinsky, deputy commander of the North Caucasus arm of Russia's Interior Ministry forces, died in hospital from chest wounds, Interfax news agency quoted an official in the local prosecutor's office as saying. Lipinsky was travelling through the regional capital of Makhachkala when it came under fire, the RIA agency reported. Gun and bomb attacks in Russia's Northern Caucasus regions are common, although they rarely result in...

MAKHACHKALA, Russia (Reuters) - Gunmen killed five policemen and wounded another nine in Russia's turbulent North Caucasus region of Dagestan Tuesday, and a special operation was under way to seize the attackers, a police source said. The losses appear to be the largest in months among the forces deployed in predominantly Muslim Dagestan, a poor mountainous region that borders Chechnya. One police officer was killed and three were injured when their car came under fire after being ambushed in a forest area southwest of the regional capital of Makhachkala, said a press officer for regional police who declined to be...

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Lebanese authorities on Friday charged 20 suspected militants, including four with Russian citizenship, with terrorism for purported membership in the al-Qaida-inspired Fatah Islam group, judicial officials and the state-run news agency said. -snip- The Russians are the first non-Arabs to be charged by authorities since Fatah Islam members fought Lebanese troops for three months starting May 20. One of the Russian nationals is from Dagestan, and was identified by his nickname, Abu Abdullah. The others are Sergei Fisotsky, born in 1989, Timur Khozkov, born in 1987, and Aslan Yimkozhayev, born in 1987. Only Fisotsky is in custody.

A fascinating piece by Andrew Higgins and Alan Cullison recently appeared in The Wall Street Journal [July 2] with the title: “How a Secret, Failed Trip to Chechnya Turned Key Plotter’s Focus to America and bin Laden.” The key plotter in this case was 9/11 mastermind and bin Laden’s Egyptian lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri. The article’s title suggests that Zawahiri’s failure to settle in Chechnya (due to his “detention” by the KGB/FSB in 1996-97) led him to Afghanistan and an alliance with bin Laden. But according to ranking U.S. terrorism expert, Yossef Bodansky, Egyptian Jihad leader Zawahiri was preparing a massive...

On July 8, insurgents in the North Caucasus region of Dagestan simultaneously attacked two senior local officials. Early in the morning a roadside bomb killed Bitar Bitarov, prosecutor for the town of Buinaksk, as he was driven to his office. After the blast, Bitarov’s car was also attacked by gunfire, and two of his bodyguards were also injured (Regnum.ru, July 8). Adilgirei Magomedtagirov, the Dagestani interior minister, immediately rushed to the scene, as is his habit whenever a rebel attack occurs in the region. It usually takes 30 minutes to drive from Makhachkala, the Dagestan capital, to Buinaksk, but since...

MAKHACHKALA, Russia -- A man blew himself up in what appeared to be an attempted suicide bombing Thursday near a mosque in the Russian province of Dagestan, killing himself and injuring another person, police said. A spokesman for the local branch of the Interior Ministry said that the man probably detonated his belt of explosives by accident. Dagestan has been plagued by increasing violence, some spilling over from the separatist conflict in Chechnya.

According to various reports from credible mujahideen sources, Abu Omar Mohammed bin Abdullah al-Saif (a.k.a. Mohammed bin Abdullah bin Saif al-Jaber)--a top tier Saudi Arabian Al-Qaida commander in Chechnya and personal military advisor to Shamil Basayev--has been killed during a Russian counterterrorism operation in neighboring Dagestan. Unable to escape after Russian soldiers backed by helicopters surrounded his temporary hideout, Abu Omar allegedly detonated an explosive device he was carrying and collapsed the building on top of himself. Known as the "Imam of the Chechen mujahideen", Abu Omar was an original founder of the Arab-Afghan mujahideen movement in Chechnya and was...

Concluding Question: The Meta-Group and the United States Government It seems clear that the meta-group, with its influential connections on at least three continents, was powerful enough to effect changes, through the Russian 9/11, in Russian history. The question arises whether they could similarly effect changes in American history as well. As we have seen Russian sources claim that the U.S. Government has had access to he meta-group, for such especially sensitive projects as the assassination of Abu al Walid al-Hamadi. They claim the meta-group's involvement in a number of U.S.-sponsored regime changes in eastern Europe, from the overthrow of...

July 3, 2005: The "Shariat Group in Dagestan," took credit for the July 1st bombing, and promised many more if Russia did not get out of Dagestan. The group wants to establish an Islamic state in the Caucasus.

MAKHACHKALA, Russia - An explosion believed to have been caused by a remote-controlled bomb ripped through a Russian military truck at a bath house in the capital of Dagestan, killing at least 10 troops in the deadliest attack in the southern province in months, officials said. Seven soldiers were wounded. Bloodstained bodies lay in the street on the outskirts of Makhachkala, and ambulances quickly whisked away the wounded. It was not immediately known whether there were any civilian victims of the blast. Rashid Isayev, the head of the province's criminal police, said the explosion occurred as three trucks packed with...

In Dagestan, a republic bordering Chechnya, tension has been rising dangerously for several weeks. This is due to a number of factors, including the activities of pro-Russian Chechen armed groups in the western part of the republic, heightened activity of the underground armed Islamic groups and the Dagestani clans’ rivalry over succession of Magomedali Magomedov, the State Council President who is about to step down. If an open conflict breaks out in the republic, Moscow may lose control of the situation in the region. The situation is most volatile in those regions of Dagestan which border Chechnya. Military units subordinated...

MAKHACHKALA, Russia - Russian commandos battled terror suspects in the southern Dagestan region allegedly planning another attack like last fall's seizure of a Beslan school, and security authorities Sunday declared the insurgents dead after a tank razed their suspected hideout. One commando also was killed. But a search through the debris after Saturday's shootout found the body of just one militant, officials said. The bodies of the other militants could have been destroyed by fire, they said. Nikolai Gryaznov, head of the Federal Security Service's branch in Dagestan, said the militants had prepared "something similar to what happened in Beslan,"...

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...

MOSCOW -- An explosion went off Friday night near a police building in the restive Dagestan region adjacent to Chechnya, and initial reports indicated two people were killed, the Interfax news agency said. The blast occurred outside the main police station in Khasavyurt, a town that has been tense amid a conflict between its mayor and the top official in Dagestan, Interfax reported, citing Interior Ministry officials in the southern Russian region. According to preliminary information, a woman and child were killed in the blast in the town near the border with Chechnya, Interfax said.

MAKHACHKALA - A group of terrorists - which killed seven border guards and took several others hostage in Tsunti region, Dagestan on Dec. 15 - was eliminated over the weekend in a special military operation, according to official reports. The final stage of the operation was conducted by special forces of the Ministry of Defense. Top defence-ministry officials based in the Caucasian region told reporters that the terrorists had been killed, stressing that none of the over 30 insurgents who crossed the Chechnya-Dagestani borders on Dec. 15 could make their retreat into the neighboring countries - Georgia or Azerbaijian -...

MAKHACHKALA, December 21 (Itar-Tass) -- An army operation against rebel groups has been on in the Dagestani highlands for six days. Special task units of border guards, artillery and aviation have been striking on rebels in a gorge in the Tsunta district for two days, staff chief of the Federal Security Service’s North Caucasian Border Department Gen. Anatoly Zabrodin told Itar-Tass. The reconnaissance found another rebel group, up to 12 rebels, on the border of the Tsumadin district, he said. He said they were not in a hurry to send special task forces there because of the avalanche hazard. Nothing...

Map of Dagestan. (TRJ) E-Mail this article Comments to Editor Discussion Forum Printer-Friendly Advertisement MAKHACHKALA - A group of about 50 terrorists burst through the Dagestani border today, Izvestia reports. There is little communication with the Tsuntinsky region of the republic, and it is difficult to find out what is actually going on there. There is speculation that they came from Georgia. A state of emergency has been announced in this region. According to media reports, the terrorists killed nine border guards and injured 10. They have seized four hostages, inhabitants of the village of Shauri. At the moment,...

A GROUP of gunmen crossed from Chechnya into the neighboring Russian region of Dagestan on Monday, attacking border guards and seizing dozens of hostages at a school in a remote mountain village, a police official said. A group of at least 25 gunmen attacked a border guard unit on the internal frontier between Chechnya and Dagestan, killing at least three servicemen and wounding 10 others, before eenteringthe village of Shauri, where they seized 30-40 hostages at a school, said Roman Shchekochikhin, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry branch in southern Russia. The ITAR-Tass news agency reported that as many as...

<p>Aug. 27 (Bloomberg) -- A government minister in Russia's southern republic of Dagestan was killed by a bomb as he was driving to work in the capital, Makhachkala, Agence France-Presse reported, citing the Interfax news agency.</p> <p>Magomedsalikh Gusayev, the information and national policy minister, was killed when an explosive device placed in the road detonated, Interfax said, citing local government officials. His driver survived the blast, they said.</p>

A bomb that killed a pregnant woman and two other people in Dagestan on Thursday was made of an artillery shell stuffed with metal and exploded with the equivalent of 10 kilograms of TNT, an official said Friday. Zaur Isayev, a deputy chief prosecutor in Dagestan, said at a news conference that the explosive device was a 75-mm shell stuffed with nails, nuts and other pieces of metal. He said there was "no doubt that the terrorist act was prepared by professionals." Isayev said authorities had learned recently that Chechen rebels planned attacks aimed at law enforcement officers in the...

A shrapnel-filled bomb exploded near a police station in Russia's troubled Dagestan region on Thursday, killing at least four people and injuring 18 others, officials said. The bomb, attached to a motorcycle or scooter parked near the police station in the city of Khasavyurt exploded at about 10:00am, the press service of the regional Interior Ministry said. The blast killed two police officers and two passersby—a woman and a 5-year-girl, the ministry said. One of the officers, the head of a branch of the city police that provides security to private companies and state-run enterprises, was killed in his office,...

WASHINGTON: The Islamic militants, with help from al-Qaeda and "charities" in Islamic countries exploited local grievances to get sympathy for separatist fight in Dagestan, which initially started as a secular autonomy movement, media reported on Saturday. Dagestan, an isolated southwest Russian village was profoundly peaceful, its residents say, until a Jordanian cleric named Khabib Abdurrakhman arrived in the early 1990s with a seemingly irresistible deal, Washington Post said in a report. "To a hamlet made destitute by the collapse of the Soviet Union, Abdurrakhman brought a slaughtered cow and a free feast every week. In a place where many people...

MAKHACHKALA, Russia (AP) — A Dutch employee of the international medical aid group Doctors Without Borders was abducted in southern Russia, officials said Tuesday. The Dutch citizen, Arjan Erkel, was seized by three gunmen in the suburbs of Makhachkala late Monday, said Abdul Musayev, spokesman for the Interior Ministry in the Russian republic of Dagestan, which borders on Chechnya. A duty officer of the Federal Security Service in Dagestan said Erkel was abducted after leaving his translator's home. Doctors Without Borders, which goes by its French acronym MSF, said in a statement that Erkel was on his way home when...