Translated material
Hooligans with a grenade launcher
In Ingushetia they shoot again in the evenings
In Ingushetia yesterday, local special services spent the entire day searching for unknown criminals who had staged a series of daring attacks the day before. On Sunday evening, almost simultaneously, the buildings of the Nazran city police department, the Matrix cinema and the main post office, located near the location of the Nazran border detachment, were fired at from grenade launchers and machine guns. No one was injured in the attack. However, residents of the republic found themselves without a landline telephone connection overnight. Experts were able to restore the operation of the domestic, intercity and international network by morning. Despite the assurances of police officials that it was not terrorists, but simple hooligans who acted in Nazran, local residents yesterday anxiously discussed what had happened and recalled the events of last year , when in less than three summer months more than 60 attacks by bandits on security officers and civilians were recorded.The aggravation of the situation in Ingushetia last year led to the fact that in August the region was declared a zone of a special comprehensive preventive operation (SPO), within the framework of which an additional contingent of internal troops of more than two thousand was introduced there. Nevertheless, the head of Ingushetia, Murad Zyazikov, constantly stated that nothing extraordinary was happening in the republic; in fact, much fewer crimes were being committed than the media reported, and journalists were making up a lot of things. In this regard, Mr. Zyazikov at one time noted that Ingushetia was subjected not to a terrorist, but to an “information attack.”
Ingush security forces, in turn, unofficially said at the time that they had received an unspoken order not to tell journalists about the ongoing attacks. However, even at this time, reports of armed emergencies from Ingushetia arrived quite regularly. Thus, in October, in the village of Ekazhevo, a car with police officers was shot at in broad daylight; in December, the house of the head of the Nazran administration, Magomed Tsechoyev, was attacked with grenade launchers.
The situation did not change after the New Year. Thus, on the night of January 18, unknown persons fired at the house of the Prime Minister of the Republic, Ibragim Malsagov, in the center of Nazran. Moreover, this attack occurred just a few hours after the end of the meeting of the republican anti-terrorism commission, in which the head of the region, Mr. Zyazikov, Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Rashid Nurgaliev, Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika, and Deputy Director of the FSB of the Russian Federation Vladimir Bulavin took part. At the meeting, a set of measures was outlined to counter terrorism and extremism in Ingushetia, with the main emphasis being placed “on the need to prevent manifestations of extremism and terrorism in the region, i.e. eliminating the causes and conditions of their occurrence.”
The bandits made their next night raid on Sunday. The shooting in the center of Nazran, according to local residents, began around 11:15 p.m. As it turned out later, the buildings of the local cinema, Ingushelectrosvyaz and the city police department came under fire. Then the bandits fled. For safety reasons, their search began only at dawn. The republican Ministry of Internal Affairs has its own opinion about who is behind these attacks. “We believe that this is hooliganism, not an act of terrorism. Presumably we know who is behind this incident. We know their names, we are looking for them,” said the Minister of Internal Affairs of the Republic Musa Medov. So far, neither vehicle inspections nor total passport control have yielded results.