Death toll from Chechen attacks climbs to 9 The death toll from the suicide attacks in the Russian republic of Chechnya on August 30 has climbed to nine, Interfax news agency quoted Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliev as saying on Wednesday.
The Chechen capital, Grozny, was rocked by three successive blasts detonated at the same location. The first one was carried out on the Bogdan Khmelnitsky street leading to the city’s airport. A suicide bomber blew himself up when police attempted to stop him for an ID check.Half an hour later at the same place, the second and third attacks occurred, aimed at eliminating the investigators and emergency workers who had arrived at the scene. Overall, nine people died as a result: six policemen, one emergency specialist and two passers-by. Another 23 men were injured, mostly law enforcement and emergency employees.All three bombers were dressed up as law enforcement officers, according to the Life News tabloid. It also claimed that a Chechen police source had revealed that the terror attack was originally planned for a different neighbourhood of the Chechen capital.A police detail patrolling the district observed the first bomber behaving suspiciously, and reported that his lips were moving as if murmuring a prayer. When two policemen approached him, the man detonated an explosive. The two officers died on the spot.When an investigation team arrived and sealed off the area, another man dressed as a police officer approached the site and cried out before blowing himself to pieces. The third bomb went off seconds later.Experts consider the total capacity of the three bombs detonated in Grozny amounts to three kilos of TNT, said Vladimir Markin, the Investigative Committee spokesman.One of the terrorists has been identified as the brother of another suicide bomber who carried out an attempted assassination of the republic’s leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, in June 2010.The two terrorists have been named as Magamed Dashaev, born in 1989 in Urus-Martan in Chechnya, and Adlan Hamidov, born in 1990 in the Stary Atagy settlement in the republic. The latter was a student at the Oil Institute in Grozny.The tactic of carrying out multiple bombings at the same spot is well-known to terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan.The Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov labeled those behind the attacks criminals. He said they had exposed their own emptiness and proved that they held nothing sacred by carrying out their attacks on one of the most important Muslim holidays – the day of Eid ul-Fitr that marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan.Experts have observed a surge in terror attacks worldwide – but particularly in war-torn Iraq and Afghanistan – around the time of Ramadan.