.Gunmen kill seven women in Russian sauna
Gunmen burst into a sauna and killed seven women today as Russian police and separatist militants fought battles across the North Caucasus.
The women, all employees at the sauna, were killed after a gang shot dead four traffic policemen at a nearby checkpoint in the town of Buinaksk in Dagestan. Police said that as many as 15 gunmen began shooting from a minibus as as they approached the checkpoint.
"Four died when they attacked the traffic police. Around the same time they entered the sauna and shot seven women," a police spokesman said. Security services began house-to-house searches for the gunmen and claimed to have identified the gang leader and several other members.
Some reports described the women as prostitutes who had been targeted by militants determined to impose strict Islamist values in the region, but this could not be confirmed. Saunas are a common form of relaxation in Russia.
Police said that they had killed three suspected militants in exchanges of fire after a car refused to stop at a roadblock in the Dagestani village of Sabnava. Two policemen were wounded in separate sniper attacks in the regional capital Makhachkala, and officers were called to defuse a bomb on a railway line into the city.
Four policemen and two separatists died in a gun battle in neighbouring Chechnya at an abandoned house near the capital Grozny. Five Interior Ministry troops were wounded in a separate clash early today.
Three gunmen also shot dead a woman fortune-teller in Chechnya’s other neighbouring republic of Ingushetia yesterday. Some Islamic groups regard fortune-telling as immoral.
The attacks add to a wave of violence across the Caucasus region in recent weeks despite Kremlin claims to have won its decade-long war with insurgents in Chechnya. Gunmen shot dead Ingushetia’s construction minister in his office on Wednesday and badly injured Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, the republic’s President, in a car bombing in June. Dagestan’s long-serving Interior Minister, Adilgerei Magomedtagirov, was killed by a sniper at a wedding in Makhachkala in June.
Zarema Sadulayeva, a children’s charity worker, and her husband were kidnapped and killed in Grozny on Monday, less than a month after the human rights campaigner Natalia Estemirova was abducted and murdered in the city.
Ali Magomedov, Dagestan’s Interior Minister, claimed that foreign Islamist forces were fomenting violence. He said: “Certainly, what is happening now is being exacerbated from outside, beyond the Russian borders. There can be no other explanation. Dagestani people do not need to kill one another.”
Analysts suggested, however, that some young men had been radicalised by repressive police measures against separatists, official corruption and widespread unemployment.
TimesOnline
The women, all employees at the sauna, were killed after a gang shot dead four traffic policemen at a nearby checkpoint in the town of Buinaksk in Dagestan. Police said that as many as 15 gunmen began shooting from a minibus as as they approached the checkpoint.
"Four died when they attacked the traffic police. Around the same time they entered the sauna and shot seven women," a police spokesman said. Security services began house-to-house searches for the gunmen and claimed to have identified the gang leader and several other members.
Some reports described the women as prostitutes who had been targeted by militants determined to impose strict Islamist values in the region, but this could not be confirmed. Saunas are a common form of relaxation in Russia.
Police said that they had killed three suspected militants in exchanges of fire after a car refused to stop at a roadblock in the Dagestani village of Sabnava. Two policemen were wounded in separate sniper attacks in the regional capital Makhachkala, and officers were called to defuse a bomb on a railway line into the city.
Four policemen and two separatists died in a gun battle in neighbouring Chechnya at an abandoned house near the capital Grozny. Five Interior Ministry troops were wounded in a separate clash early today.
Three gunmen also shot dead a woman fortune-teller in Chechnya’s other neighbouring republic of Ingushetia yesterday. Some Islamic groups regard fortune-telling as immoral.
The attacks add to a wave of violence across the Caucasus region in recent weeks despite Kremlin claims to have won its decade-long war with insurgents in Chechnya. Gunmen shot dead Ingushetia’s construction minister in his office on Wednesday and badly injured Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, the republic’s President, in a car bombing in June. Dagestan’s long-serving Interior Minister, Adilgerei Magomedtagirov, was killed by a sniper at a wedding in Makhachkala in June.
Zarema Sadulayeva, a children’s charity worker, and her husband were kidnapped and killed in Grozny on Monday, less than a month after the human rights campaigner Natalia Estemirova was abducted and murdered in the city.
Ali Magomedov, Dagestan’s Interior Minister, claimed that foreign Islamist forces were fomenting violence. He said: “Certainly, what is happening now is being exacerbated from outside, beyond the Russian borders. There can be no other explanation. Dagestani people do not need to kill one another.”
Analysts suggested, however, that some young men had been radicalised by repressive police measures against separatists, official corruption and widespread unemployment.
TimesOnline
posted by madtom at 8:40 AM
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