19 Dead in Gunbattle in Chechen Capital
by VOA News December 04, 2014
Russian officials say a gun battle with heavily armed Islamist militants in the Chechen capital, Grozny, has left at least 10 police officers dead and 28 others wounded.
Chechnya's Kremlin-backed leader, Ramzan Kadyrov said nine militants were also been killed.
Russian officials say militants traveling in three cars attacked police at a Grozny checkpoint before storming nearby buildings.
Moscow said militants occupied the 10-story Press House building where at least six of them are said to have died in a fire. Others were surrounded inside a school that was left in ruins.
Kadyrov said some of the gunmen were 'very heavily armed,' including with grenade launchers.
The violence erupted hours before Russian President Vladimir Putin gave his annual state of the nation address.
Touching on events in Grozny in his speech, Putin called on Russians to trust that the security services "will be able to deal with this situation."
There were uncomfirmed reports on social media of sightings of Putin's motorcade heading to the Kremlin in the middle of the night as the unrest in Grozny unfolded.
In October, five policemen were killed in Grozny when they stopped a young suicide bomber from attacking a concert hall.
Grozny has been the epicenter of two bloody wars in the past two decades between Russian forces and Chechen rebels seeking independence from Moscow.
Chechnya has been led by Kadyrov since 2005. The Caucasus republic has enjoyed a period of relative calm that has been attributed to what is widely seen as Kadyrov's strongarm rule, often harshly criticized by rights groups.
Blaming the West
Meanwhile, a prominent Chechen lawmaker has accused U.S. and NATO intelligence services of being behind the attack in Grozny, saying it is part of efforts "to weaken Russia both economically and politically," Russian media reported.
"They have not succeeded and they will never succeed in their plans,' Dukuvakh Abdurakhmanov, the Chechen parliament speaker, told an emergency meeting of the legislature on Thursday, TASS reported.
'The dreams of [U.S. President Barack] Obama and [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel and their accomplices will never come true so long as Russian President Vladimir Putin and his closest ally and our national hero Ramzan Kadyrov, the president of Chechnya and the hero of Russia, defend Russia's interests," Abdurakhmanov said.
He also blasted videos of intense military activity in and around Grozny that circulated on social media the night of the attack as "fake."
"The fake videos that are being distributed in social networks were shot far away from Grozny and long before [the incident]," Abdurakhmanov said.
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