Translated material
Shooting ahead
Militants ambushed police officers sent to capture them
In the Vedeno district of Chechnya, targeted checks of houses and massive combing of the area continued all day yesterday. Military and police officers were looking for militants who attacked a convoy of federal forces on Sunday morning, killing four and injuring ten law enforcement officers. None of the separatists were injured. Where they went remained unclear yesterday.Federal forces in Chechnya have not suffered such heavy losses since the beginning of summer. Over the past few months, the hotbed of tension in the North Caucasus has moved to the neighboring republics - Ingushetia, where attacks on security forces have recently occurred almost every day, and Dagestan. Last night, the republican intelligence services were only wondering whether the Sunday attack by the separatists was a one-time action or a harbinger of their planned intensification.
According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Chechnya, a convoy of three cars carrying soldiers of the battalion of internal troops "South" and employees of the Vedeno District Department of Internal Affairs came under heavy fire on Sunday at about 8.30. The bandits set up an ambush on a mountainside five kilometers from the village of Dargo, where additional military and police forces began to gather on Saturday evening.
On October 6, police officers on the outskirts of Dargo, near secondary school No. 2, came across an armed group of ten people. A short-lived battle ensued, during which the militants managed to disperse and escape safely. The police, calling for help, organized a pursuit. An hour and a half later, they managed to overtake the unknown people and destroy one of the bandits. None of the policemen were injured. However, the search for the main group of militants had to be stopped after that due to the descending fog and darkness.
In the morning, several more vehicles with military and police officers were sent to Dargo, who were supposed to start combing the area and door-to-door canvassing of households. Security forces usually travel around Chechnya in armored vehicles. However, this time the fighters of the “South” battalion left the regional center in two ordinary UAZ vehicles. Together with them, several operatives from the Vedensky District Department of Internal Affairs went in search of the separatists in a simple Niva.
As investigators later found out, the militants took up positions on both sides of the Dargo-Vedeno road, hiding behind the trees. As soon as the police cars arrived at the ambush site, heavy fire from machine guns and machine guns was opened on them. The battle lasted less than half an hour, and during this time, judging by the shell casings found, the militants spent more than 2 thousand rounds of ammunition. The driver of one of the UAZ vehicles managed to contact the regional center by radio and report the attack. But the police and military were unable to get out of the cars and take up convenient positions to offer resistance under heavy machine gun fire.
After firing back, the militants calmly left. ROVD operatives who arrived at the scene of the emergency 20 minutes later found 14 wounded. Two employees of the Vedeno police and eight soldiers of the “South” battalion were taken to the hospital. Three military internal troops and the head of the duty unit of the Vedeno regional police department, a contract soldier from the Krasnodar Territory, died on the way to the hospital.
Neither the republican FSB Directorate nor ordinary operatives from the regional department could say yesterday what kind of detachment was operating in the Dargo area. The Chechen prosecutor's office suggested that in both cases militants from the gang of Usman Munzigov (call sign "Shatrav") acted. However, the special services are in no hurry to blame everything on the native and so-called emir of the village of Dargo. The fact is that Munzigov, who once underwent sabotage training in the Khattab camp and has been on the federal wanted list for several years, according to operational data, is now hiding in the territory of Dagestan. Also, yesterday in Chechnya they could not definitely predict what to expect from the separatists in the near future - the traditional “withdrawal to winter bases” with the onset of cold weather, or, conversely, activation. So far, compared to last year, according to intelligence services, there is a noticeable sharp decrease in the number of attacks on security forces.