Fight in the smoke

Chechen special services suffered their heaviest losses since the beginning of the year

In the Chechen city of Argun on Thursday night, two law enforcement officers were killed and six more were wounded as a result of a fierce battle with militants. There have not been such bloody clashes in the republic for a long time. The losses of the bandits were much less. In the house in which the criminals were hiding, which was burned down as a result of the shelling, only one corpse was found.

Where the rest of the bandits went (if there were any) remained a complete mystery. Representatives of the investigation officially stated that only one militant was involved in the shootout, who was killed. But then it remained even more incomprehensible how he managed to resist an entire police detachment for at least half an hour, and even shoot eight people, two of them to death. According to unofficial data, there were supposedly at least three militants.

As Ramzan Tasukhanov, deputy head of the Shali district administration for security issues, said, the fighting in Argun began around midnight. During a special operation, employees of the Shali Department of Internal Affairs and servicemen of the Yug battalion came across some armed people who had taken refuge in one of the private residential buildings on Stepnaya Street. The operation lasted about half an hour. The security forces had to storm the building, using machine guns and grenade launchers, and as a result a fire started in the house. After that, the shooting died down. Despite all attempts to extinguish the building, the house burned down almost to the ground. According to a representative of the UPC department for the Chechen Republic, the owner of the house is already known. As it turned out, he had not lived there permanently for a long time and most likely had nothing to do with the militants.

“The body of one of the gang members was found at the scene. His identity has already been established, but we cannot yet name him. The only thing that can be said is that he was a young man, born in 1985, who lived in Argun,” noted Ramzan Tasukhanov. He also added that other militants could have been hiding in the house, but nothing is known about their fate yet.

Losses on the part of the security forces turned out to be much more serious. During the shootout, the commander of the patrol service battalion of the Shali Department of Internal Affairs, police captain Movladi Khatuyev, and the platoon commander of the battalion of internal troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia “South”, Renat Buluev, were killed. Six more people - two police officers and four military personnel - received gunshot wounds.

As reported by the SKP department, a criminal case has been opened on the fact of the clash under Art. 317 (attempt on the life of a law enforcement officer) and Art. 222 (illegal possession of weapons) of the Criminal Code of Russia. But the investigation has no suspects and is unlikely to appear, since it is officially believed that only one militant offered resistance, whose body was found.

Sergey MINENKO