Dagestan gunmen kill 13 in latest attacks

GUNMEN IN the Russian republic of Dagestan have killed seven women in a sauna and six policemen, in the latest spasm of violence to strike the increasingly unstable North Caucasus.

At least four policemen and two militants also died in gun battles in Chechnya, at the end of a week that saw two Chechen charity workers murdered, a Dagestani journalist killed and a government minister in nearby Ingushetia shot dead in his office.

Investigators said 10 to 15 gunmen hijacked a van and forced the driver to take them into the Dagestani town of Buinaksk. There they gunned down four traffic policemen at a checkpoint and, after taking their weapons, burst into a nearby sauna and murdered seven women inside.

The assailants then fled into the thickly forested mountains of Dagestan, where they abandoned the van and released its driver. In a separate incident, two traffic policemen were shot dead in the Dagestani capital, Makhachkala.

Security services in the North Caucasus now face almost daily attack from gunmen whom the Kremlin says are part of an international network of radical Islamist groups. Analysts say separatist rebels have come under greater Islamist influence in recent years, but note that deep poverty, rampant corruption and police brutality also drive young men towards the militants.

The latest surge in violence has seen dozens of policemen and soldiers killed and several senior officials attacked. Ingushetia’s construction minister was killed this week, as the region’s president continues his recovery from injuries suffered in a huge car bomb blast in June.

Last month, Russian claims to have “normalised” the situation in Chechnya came under scrutiny when leading human rights activist Natalya Estemirova was abducted in the regional capital, Grozny, and found dead on the other side of the heavily guarded border with Ingushetia.

“There has taken place a whole series of political murders or attempted murders aimed at destabilising the situation in the Caucasus,” Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said yesterday.