Chechen militants parliament raid, 6 dead: Islamist insurgents have attacked the Chechen parliament Tuesday in a brazen suicide raid which left six dead and 17 wounded, defying the Kremlin's claims of stability in the volatile south.
In a clear challenge to Moscow, the raid took place as Minister of Interior of Russia was on a visit to the provincial capital of Grozny.
The three assailants were closely guarded Parliament complex and inside. A militant blew himself up at the door and two others ran into the building shouting "Allahu akbar!" - "God is great" in Arabic - as they opened fire on people inside, has said the spokesman of the Chechen police Bekkhoyev Ramzan.
The prosecutor's office in regional chief said that the two other attackers were also detonated after a shootout with police, while other officials said they were killed in a shootout. Two policemen and a civilian government employee were killed in the raid and 17 others were wounded, according to the indictment.
body parts bloodstains and a decapitated corpse were still scattered outside the hours of construction after the attack that police and special forces backed by armored vehicles were patrolling the area.
An Associated Press reporter saw ambulances take to parliament two bodies, with the severed head of a militant.
Chechnya, the regional president, backed by Moscow, Ramzan Kadyrov has tried to downplay the attack, saying the attackers were killed quickly. His office said Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev has called to offer help. Medvedev's visit to France, was informed of the attack by Russian security agents.
In Washington, the U.S. offered their condolences to the families of dead and wounded.
"We also express our solidarity with Russia in the fight against terrorism. We are concerned by the continuing violence in Russia's North Caucasus, which contributes to instability and personal insecurity in the region," said spokesman Mark Toner State Department. "Several independent reports and non-governmental confirm that the level of violence has increased in 2010 in several regions of the North Caucasus, and we've been following these developments closely ".
Kadyrov and Russian Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev attended a session of Parliament shortly after the raid. Nurgaliyev said the insurgents had tried to enter the main chamber of Parliament.
"As always, they failed. Unfortunately, we were not able to prevent loss of life," said Nurgaliyev. "The situation we have seen today is extremely rare. Here, there is stability and security. "
Kadyrov, a former rebel, has recruited many ex-militants in its security forces fear. The head bullnecked 34-year-old former militia has also sought to blunt the rebels call a massive construction boom in Chechnya and a campaign to impose strict Islamic values.
The news agency ITAR-Tass quoted the Chechen Interior Ministry branch as saying that the attack was planned by warlord Khusein Gakayev who had unleashed the main rebel commander, Doku Umarov. He said Gakayev launched the attack to try to improve its profile.
Human rights activists have accused the security forces and paramilitary units under the command of Kadyrov's extra-judicial executions, abductions and torture of suspected rebels and their families.
Russian troops withdrew in humiliation after the first 1994-96 war in Chechnya separatists who left the region de facto independent and largely lawless. The Russian army in Chechnya canceled in 1999 following a rebel incursion into a neighboring province and bomb attacks in apartment buildings in Moscow and other Russian cities attributed to militants.
While large-scale battles in Chechnya ended years ago, raids hit-and-run by the rebels have continued. In August, a shooting in the village of Kadyrov between his guards and suspected insurgents have killed 19 people, including five civilians.
Islamist insurgents have also spread rapidly through the neighboring provinces of the mainly Muslim Russian region of North Caucasus separatists who seek to transform it into an independent emirate, which adheres to Shariah. The insurgents are thought to be in a network of cells that sporadic shelter in the forested mountains of the region.
They struck at the heart of Russia in March, when suicide bombers blew up in Dagestan in the Moscow subway, killing 40 people and wounding about 100. Last month, a suicide car bomb killed 17 people and injured over 140 in Vladikavkaz, a major city in the North Caucasus.
These bombings followed by many other terrorist attacks by Chechen rebels since the Soviet collapse of 1991, including the school siege in Beslan in 2004 that ended in a bloodbath in which over 330 people - about half of them children - were killed.