Grozny, October 19: At least two people were killed on Tuesday when a suicide bomber and two gunmen attacked the local parliament in Russia’s restive southern republic of Chechnya, RIA news agency reported.
RIA said a suicide bomber had detonated explosives just outside parliament and that two armed insurgents had then engaged in a gun battle with guards around the building. Interfax news agency said the shooting was continuing.
The Kremlin is struggling to contain a growing Islamist insurgency in the North Caucasus, a strip of impoverished, ethnically mixed provinces along predominantly Orthodox Christian Russia’s southern border.
The Kremlin had declared victory in its battle with Chechen separatists, but analysts say a wave of shootings and bombings over recent months shows Moscow has failed to tame the growing insurgency.
Local leaders say it is fuelled by desperate poverty, clan rivalries, rampant corruption, Islamism and heavy-handed tactics by law enforcement agencies.
——–Agencies