Attack on law enforcers in Chechnya was the first this year

The attack on the mobile police post in the Sunzha District of Chechnya, as a result of which two law enforcers were wounded and one attacker killed, was the first armed incident in Chechnya in 2019 and the fifth since August 2018.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on January 28, the Chechen Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) informed about an attack on the law enforcers' post, committed at night on January 26. According to the MIA, the post located in an outskirt of the village of Sernovodskoye was shelled from submachine guns; two law enforcers were wounded, and one attacker was later found dead in the forest and identified as Mansur Beltoev, a 24-year-old resident of Ingushetia.

The previous armed incident in Chechnya occurred on November 17, 2018, when a suicide bomber blew her up near a checkpoint in Grozny. She was identified by her passports as a 25-year-old Karina Spiridonova.

Less than a week before the suicide attack on the checkpoint, on November 11, law enforcers reported two young men killed near the village of Martan-Chu, suggesting that they might be involved in the armed underground. Residents of Urus-Martan, born in 1994 and 2001, according to law enforcers, tried to hijack a car, rendered armed resistance and were shot dead.

In September 2018, Chechen law enforcers reported the killing of three alleged militants near the border with Ingushetia. According to the Chechen MIA, two of them had been wanted as participants in the warfare in Syria.

The largest attack on law enforcers in Chechnya over the past six months was the attack committed by a group of five young men on August 20, 2018. According to the Chechen MIA, two men attacked a police station in the Shali District with knives, wounded two policemen and were killed; another man tried to blow him up at a DPS (road-and-patrol service) post in the village of Mesker-Yurt of the Shali District; however, he survived, and policemen were not hurt. On the same morning, in Grozny, law enforcers killed a car driver, who knocked down three policemen. A child that was in the car perished too.

The "Islamic State" (IS), a terrorist organization banned in Russia by the court, claimed responsibility for the above series of attacks on policemen in Chechnya.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on January 29, 2019 at 01:17 am MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.