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Bomb attack on Ingush President

MOSCOW: The head of Russia’s southern republic of Ingushetia was gravely injured in a suicide bomb attack on Monday, signalling a setback to Kremlin efforts to curb violence in the region.

A car packed with some 70 kg of explosives slammed into the convoy of President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov as he was travelling to office and exploded, hurling his armoured Mercedes against the wall of a roadside house. Mr. Yevkurov’s driver was killed while he and his brother were injured. Both were said to be in stable condition after undergoing surgery in a local hospital.

Mr. Yevkurov, a 45-year-old paratroop officer who led the famous takeover of the Pristina airport in Kosovo by Russian troops after the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, was appointed President of Ingushetia last year. He was charged with stamping out rampant corruption and surging Islamist attacks in the smallest and poorest republic of Russia with a population of around half a million people. Ingushetia and Dagestan have recently overtaken neighbouring Chechnya as Russia’s most violence-plagued regions.

The deputy head of Ingushetia’s Supreme Court was gunned down on June 10 and a former Interior Minister of Dagestan was murdered on June 5. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who travelled to North Caucasus only last month to energise the fight against terrorism, vowed a “blunt and harsh” response to the Monday attackers. The assassination attempt on the Ingushetia leader took place on the fifth anniversary of a large-scale raid on the region’s capital Nazran by Chechen and Ingush fighters. The rebels had virtually seized the town for one night, hunting down and killing nearly 100 police and security officials.

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