Suicide bombers trained at base destroyed in Ingushetia

01.04.2011, 15.49

MOSCOW, April 1 (Itar-Tass) – Suicide bombers were trained at a base destroyed in Ingushetia’s Sunzha district during a large-scale special operation on March 28. They were trained for terrorist acts both in Ingushetia and outside the North Caucasus, Ingushetia’s leader Yunus-Bek Yevkurov told a news conference in Moscow on Friday.

“That was a base where suicide bombers were trained and ideologically brainwashed,” he said. Teenagers were drawn there by means of deceit to be never let out. “Plans were to use them for terrorist acts in the republic, outside it and outside the North Caucasus,” Yevkurov said.

He noted that the parents of some of the killed gunmen preferred their children to be killed in a special operation instead of blasting themselves somewhere and killing other people.

“I would like to thank secret services for professional work. They have demonstrated high professional skills,” he stressed.

A multi-stage operation to liquidate Chechen warlord Doku Umarov was launched at the beginning of this year. The crucial stage of the operation to liquidate the warlord and his closest allies took place in a mountainous area 20 kilometres away from the settlement of Verkhny Alkun, Sunzha district, on March 28.

It is the so-called “Sunzha triangle” between Ingushetia, Chechnya and North Ossetia, from where it is possible to go through mountain passes to Georgia. In the early 2000s, it was a transhipment base of gunmen, and, according to the operational information, for the wide possibility to manoeuvre, it was one of the most likely places where Umarov could base, the source said.

Seventeen gunmen were killed in an air strike, and two suspects in the terrorist act at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport on January 24 were detained. An investigation brigade keeps working at the site.

Gunmen leader Doku Umarov’s common-law wife, his personal doctor and handy assistant are identified among those killed in a large-scale special operation in Ingushetia’s Sunzha district, an informed source of the republic’s law enforcement authorities told Itar-Tass.

Thus, it is highly probable that Umarov himself was killed in the operation, the source stressed.

The woman who was the gunmen leader’s common-law wife, his personal doctor Khamzat Byutukayev and his “right-hand man”, 54-year-old Supyan Abdullayev, who, according to law-enforcers’ information, was always present near Umarov, are already identified. Also identified are other two gunmen – a 23-year-old resident of the village of Ali-Yurt of the Nazran district and a 24-year-old resident of the Nasyr-Kortovsky municipal area of Nazran. The bodies of 14 of the 17 killed gunmen are in a morgue in Ingushetia. Remains of other three are taken for genetic examination in Moscow, the source said.

Ingushetia’s President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov told Itar-Tass earlier that Umarov was not among the gunmen in the morgue in Ingushetia.

Only genetic examination can exactly establish the identities of the gunmen. It is impossible to visually identify them – several bombs equivalent to a total of up three tonnes of TNT hit the dugout where they were.