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Chechen Group Behind Beslan Claims Attack Kadyrov Vows To Wipe Out Islamic Militants June 29, 2009 MOSCOW (Reuters) -- The Chechen rebel group behind the 2004 Beslan school massacre has claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing last week that badly wounded the president of Russia's southern region of Ingushetia.

The course of events in the republic of Ingushetia, the smallest and youngest republic of the Russian Federation, has changed dramatically over the past two years. In particular, changes were seen in the confrontation between the armed opposition, the Sharia jamaat and the pro-Moscow authorities, namely republican head Yunus-Bek Yevkurov. The jihadists call the republic the Velayat of Ingushetia within the Caucasus Emirate. Head of the Ingushetia republic, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov There has been an overall decline in the number of armed clashes in Ingushetia since 2010, primarily the result of the Russian security services successfully planting a mole at the...

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...

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...

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...

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...

A second blast has been reported at the scene of a suicide bomb attack in Russia's North Caucasus region of Ingushetia. At least one policeman was killed in the first explosion near the police headquarters in a town in Russia's North Caucasus region of Ingushetia. "According to preliminary information a suicide bomber set off an explosion outside the town's police station," said a spokesman for the local interior ministry. "At least one policeman was killed and others were injured.

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...

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/)....

At least 11 people have been killed in a powerful bomb attack at a police station in southern Russia, officials and hospital sources say. The suspected suicide bombing in Nazran, main city in the republic of Ingushetia, injured at least 50 others. It is reported to have occurred as staff gathered in a courtyard. Ingushetia, which borders Chechnya, has recently been rocked by shootings, bombings and other attacks on police and government officials. The attacker was reported to have rammed his vehicle into the gates of the police compound as officers were reporting for inspection, government spokesman Kaloi Akhilgov said....

NAZRAN, Russia (AP) - The construction minister in Russia's violence-plagued Ingushetia was shot to death in his office Wednesday, the latest in a series of high-profile attacks on top officials in the restive republic. Ruslan Amerkhanov was shot by two men who entered his office in the republic's capital Magas, one armed with an assault rifle and the other with a pistol, said Ingush Interior Ministry spokeswoman Madina Khadziyeva. The minister's assistant was wounded in the shooting, she said. The assailants fled in a waiting car. Ingush Security Council secretary Alexei Vorobyov said investigators believe the killing could be related...

Abducted and murdered on Wednesday, hours after her organisation backed calls for Vladimir Putin to face trial over atrocities in Chechnya. Natalya Estemirova, who won numerous international awards for her work, was bundled into a car as she left her home in Grozny, the Chechen capital. Her body was later found by the side of a road in the neighbouring province of Ingushetia. She had been shot twice in the head at close range. Mrs Estemirova, a single mother in her early 40s, was the seventh opponent of Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed Chechen president, to have been murdered in the...

Tensions in Russia's turbulent North Caucasus mounted after Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen president, said he had been authorized by the Kremlin to begin a campaign of "torture" against rebels in neighbouring Ingushetia. Russian troops appeared to be preparing to launch a major counterterrorism operation a day after Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, the Ingush president, was seriously wounded in a suicide bombing. Mr Yevkurov, a close ally of Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, was on life-support in a Moscow hospital yesterday after sustaining serious injuries to his skull, ribs and vital organs, doctors said. Speaking from the hospital, Mr Medvedev ordered a "direct...

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...

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....

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....

NAZRAN, Russia (Reuters) - An explosion in the southern Russian region of Ingushetia destroyed a government office in the main town of Nazran on Tuesday, killing eight people and injuring another 22, officials said. An official from the Ingush prosecutor's office said a gas leak was the likely cause of the blast, but added that this had yet to be confirmed. "The total number of people recovered from under the rubble is 30, eight of them dead," a spokeswoman for the regional Emergency Services Ministry said in Nazran. At least 17 people were rushed to hospital, while others with lighter...

More than 10 people have been kidnapped in Ingushetia province in southern Russia, a local official said Friday, as guerrilla attacks by rebels in the region intensify. "Ten to 15 people were kidnapped last night in a gambling arcade by armed men in masks. They were driven away in their own cars," a local government spokesman told reporters, without giving further details about the incident. RIA Novosti news agency quoted a local Interior Ministry official as saying the kidnapping happened in the town of Ordzhonikidzevskaya and that four police officers were among those taken. So far this year 52 police...

Russian troops have launched a search for militants in the volatile southern region of Ingushetia after a deadly attack on a military convoy. Official Russian reports of the ambush, which has been blamed on local Muslim separatists, said two soldiers were killed and at least seven injured. But other reports suggested as many as 40 Russian soldiers were killed. The convoy came under grenade attack and machine gun fire near Nazran, capital of the north Caucasus region. Frequent attacks "A search of the area is currently taking place, the bandits who carried out the attack on a defence ministry military...