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Deadly Attacks On Russian City

Scores of militants launched simultaneous attacks on police and government buildings in one of the main cities in Russia's turbulent Caucasus region Thursday, sparking battles involving heavy-arms fire and explosions that forced the evacuation of schools and left corpses in the streets.

Chechen rebels claimed responsibility for the attacks in Nalchik, the capital of Kabardino-Balkariya, a republic near Chechnya. The republic has suffered a growing wave of violence that apparently is connected to Islamic extremists and that is seen as a spillover of the Chechen rebels' decade-long fight against Russian forces.

Sporadic shooting continued some four hours after the morning attacks began and amid the chaos officials gave varying accounts of casualties and the number of attackers. At least 13 people were killed and 84 wounded, local health ministry spokesman Stepan Kuskov said, including three civilians, three rebels and seven police officers.

Russian Deputy Interior Minister Alexander Chekalin said in Moscow that more than 50 militants had been killed. Estimates of the number of attackers ranged from 60 to 300.

Dmitry Kozak, President Vladimir Putin's envoy to the region, said the attackers were holding hostages at a police station, but he did not specify whether they were civilians or officers.

The Kavkaz-Center Web site, seen as a voice for rebels loyal to Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, said it had received a short message on behalf of the Caucasus Front. It said the group is part of the Chechen rebel armed forces and includes Yarmuk, an alleged militant Islamic group based in Kabardino-Balkariya.

The strategy of launching simultaneous attacks on police facilities echoed last year's siege in another Caucasus republic, Ingushetia, in which 92 people died and police armories were looted. Basayev claimed responsibility for those attacks.

The Interior Ministry officer said Thursday's fighting began after police received an anonymous telephoned tip that about 10 armed militants had entered the suburb of Belaya Rechka, and police and security forces launched an operation to capture them.

The Interfax news agency cited an unidentified law-enforcement official as saying the battle was sparked by the detention of a group of adherents to the radical Wahhabi sect of Islam, and that their fellow believers were trying to free them.

Gunmen launched simultaneous attacks against three police stations, the city's airport and the regional headquarters of the Interior Ministry and Federal Security Service, a police officer said on condition of anonymity. They also attacked the city's military commissariat and raided a hunting store, apparently to obtain weapons, the officer said.

The regional office of the Emergency Situations Ministry said fighting was under way at the airport. Interfax said security forces had repelled an attack there. All flights were canceled.

The militants also attacked the regional headquarters of the Russian prison system, the Emergency Situation Ministry's press office said. Interfax said that a border guards' office also came under attack.

At least three alleged militants were killed, a local Interior Ministry official said on customary condition of anonymity.

An Associated Press reporter saw three bodies in one street in the city center near government buildings: one in police uniform, one man with a gun and one in civilian clothes.

A teacher from School No. 5, who gave only his first name, Spartak, said children had been evacuated from the building, located close to a police station and an anti-terrorism office at the center of the attacks. Black smoke billowed from the building as panic-stricken parents searched for their children in the school yard.

Shooting continued an hour after the attacks reportedly began and windows and doors in the local office of the Federal Security Service were smashed. Snipers crouched on the building's roof and soldiers in masks and camouflage were in the streets, where two armored personnel carriers were parked.

A crowd of bystanders stood about 100 yards away from the building, and there appeared to be no effort to cordon off the site of fighting to prevent more casualties.

Federal forces blocked off much of the city of 235,000, but intense shooting from automatic rifles and grenade-launchers could be heard in the center.

Nalchik is about 60 miles northwest of Beslan, where Chechen rebels raided a school in September 2004, taking hundreds of hostages. More than 330 people, half of them children, died in the raid which ended in explosions and gunfire after three days.

In December, gunmen raided the regional branch of the federal Drug Control Agency in Nalchik, killing four employees, looting an arsenal and setting the office ablaze.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered security forces to deal more severely with suspected Islamic militants in the south. Law-enforcement agencies have launched a series of sweeps targeting suspected extremists outside Chechnya.

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