In Dagestan, militants attacked border guards and police

The Dagestan bandit underground has witnessed further attacks on security forces over the past 24 hours. Two border guards were wounded as a result of militants shelling a border post in the Tsuntinsky district of the republic. And in the explosion in Makhachkala, four police officers were injured.

Late on Thursday evening, a group of militants attacked a border post on the outskirts of the village of Khupri in one of the most inaccessible highland regions of Dagestan, a few kilometers from the state border with Georgia.

As Kommersant was told by the press service of the republican Ministry of Internal Affairs, the attack on the Khuprinskaya border outpost of the Khunzakh border detachment of the FSB of Russia occurred at approximately 21:40. “The fire came from five points at once. They fired from automatic weapons and presumably grenade launchers,” said a department representative. The border guards immediately entered into a shootout with the criminals. Within 20 minutes they managed to disperse the group of militants. However, two border post employees were injured. The shooters fled into the forest. On Friday morning, security forces began combing the area. Additional forces from the local police department and neighboring police departments were brought to the scene of the incident.

The Khupri border post has existed since 1995, and four years ago, as part of a targeted federal program for the development of the state border, a new building equipped with the latest technology was opened there. It was also reported that the outpost has automated electronic surveillance systems. The border detachment stationed there is intended to cover a section of the state border with Georgia with a length of about 40 km.

It is assumed that members of the so-called Tsuntin gang may be involved in the attack. It was against them that in July of this year in the Kizlyar region of the republic, the security forces carried out a large-scale special operation using aviation, which ended in failure. Then militants from a group of Makhach Idrisov, a native of the Tsuntinsky district, fired at a car convoy of internal troops, after which a group of illegal armed formation members of 15-20 people was blocked in a wooded area. The special operation against them lasted three days. Then two militants were killed, including Makhach Idrisov himself, but the main group managed to break through the cordon and escape. The losses of the security forces were much greater: 5 law enforcement officers were killed, including 2 members of the Alpha special forces unit, and another 13 received various injuries.

Also on Friday night, militants showed up in the capital of the republic. The explosion in Makhachkala occurred at 0:20. The target of the bandits was a detachment of road patrol officers who were serving not far from the building of the Institute of Physics and Geothermy on Yaragsky Street in the center of Makhachkala. When the squad stopped another car to check documents, the bandits detonated an explosive device of an unknown type over the phone. As a result, four police officers were taken to the hospital: two were wounded in the arm and leg, all four were shell-shocked. “The explosive device was stuffed with destructive elements in the form of chopped reinforcement,” the Dagestan Ministry of Internal Affairs told Kommersant. According to the interlocutor, the power of the “infernal machine” was about 400 g of TNT. Due to the presence of damaging elements, the police official vehicle received multiple holes.

Yulia Rybina, Makhachkala

The Tsuntinskys have crossed all boundaries