ISIS terrorists claim attacks on security forces in Russia’s Chechnya

At least two armed men reported killed and several police wounded in a string of attacks claimed by ISIS.

A series of coordinated attacks against security forces were reported on Monday in Russia’s volatile autonomous republic of Chechnya, with authorities claiming to have killed at least two attackers.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group claimed responsibility for the violence, the SITE monitoring group reported, citing the group’s Amaq website.

“Fighters from the Islamic State attacked Chechen police officers and elements in Grozny and Shali in Mesker-Yurt,” Amaq said, according to SITE.

Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands, reporting from Moscow, said information on the situation in Chechnya was scarce but there could have been at least three attacks.

“These attacks appear not to have been particularly sophisticated or effective,” he said. “Exact details are still coming in. The Russian investigative committee says it has launched a criminal case into the attacks.”

Officials in Russia confirmed several policemen were wounded in the capital Grozny and Shali.

Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya’s president, said on his official Telegram social-networking account that one of the attacks saw a suicide bomber detonate his explosives in Mesker-Yurt, on the outskirts of Grozny. The attack injured several policemen, but the attacker survived and was taken to a hospital, he said.

Police in the North Caucasus region said that, in a separate incident, two men armed with knives attempted to enter the district police department in the town of Shali and “inflicted wounds on two police employees on duty” before being shot dead.

According to an anonymous source cited by RIA Novosti news agency, at least one female bystander was also wounded in the Shali incident.

There were also attacks in Grozny, according to unconfirmed reports by the Telegram channel Mash.

In one incident, an attacker was allegedly shot after hitting a traffic policeman with his car. There were also reports of a shoot-out between police officers and attackers at the intersection between Pervyomaiskaya and Isaev streets in Grozny that killed one officer.

Chechnya’s Interior Minister Ruslan Alkhanov said the attackers “attempted to destabilise the situation in Chechnya” but have been stopped. He said no officers were killed.

The Kremlin has relied on Kadyrov to stabilise Chechnya after two separatist wars in the 1990s and has provided generous subsidies to help rebuild the region.

International human rights groups have accused Kadyrov of rampant abuses, including arbitrary arrests and extrajudicial killings by his feared security forces.

Rebels, some of whom have sworn allegiance to ISIL, still conduct sporadic raids in Chechnya.

Source: Al Jazeera