Chechen gang claims responsibility for Ingush president assassination attempt

A militant group operating in the Caucasus has claimed responsibility for the assassination attempt on the president of the southern Russian Republic of Ingushetia, Yunus-bek Yevkurov.

The statement was posted on a Caucasus news website, saying the assault was ordered by the warlord Doku Umarov.

The Investigative Committee with the Prosecutor’s Office has refused to comment on the reports.

“We are not commenting on rumors,” the official spokesman for the Investigative Committee Vladimir Markin told Interfax.

The Russian Interior Ministry has made no comments on the reports.

“We don’t comment on information circulated on the Internet,” a ministry spokesman told Interfax.

Umarov is accused of murder, kidnapping and terror attacks in the republics of Chechnya and Ingushetia and is linked with the siege of Beslan, where more than 300 people, mostly children, died.

Some media say Umarov could have been killed in an anti-terror operation in May this year.

Meanwhile, Ingushetia’s president is still in a critical condition in a Moscow hospital after last week’s attack when a suicide bomber struck his motorcade in the city of Nazran.