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Gunmen kill 4, seize weapons in Russia's Caucasus
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-12-15 08:51

Islamic militants killed four anti-drugs unit members and seized more than 170 submachine guns and pistols on Tuesday in an attack on the unit's offices in Russia's volatile Caucasus region.

A militant Islamist group, calling itself "Yarmuk," claimed responsibility for the attack, branding the unit a "criminal organization" that had caused people to become drug addicts.

The gunmen set fire to the building after stealing 36 submachine guns, 136 pistols and a large amount of ammunition during the night-time attack in Nalchik, capital of the Kabardino-Balkaria region, local media reported.

"The attackers handcuffed them (the four members of staff), took them into the basement of the state drug-control building and shot them there," Interfax news agency quoted a spokeswoman for the region's drugs control department as saying.

Dmitry Kozak, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin and his representative in the Caucasus, rushed to the scene and demanded to know how the raid had not been prevented.

"Duty number one is, above all, to detain the criminals and at least return the weapons. Duty number two is to decide who is responsible for advance warning of such crimes," he said in televised comments.

"If there had been such (advance warning), then such a crime or at least the removal of such an arsenal of weapons, would have been impossible."

Kozak was appointed by Putin in the wake of the Beslan hostage-taking and charged with cracking down on the official corruption and incompetence that hamper Russian efforts to end the Chechen war.

It was the second attack claimed by the Yarmuk group, which said it killed two policemen in September in an attack seen as evidence the already decade-long war was spreading to other parts of the mainly Muslim North Caucasus.

"Thanks to the efforts of this criminal organization (the anti-drugs unit), the number of drug addicts ... in the Nalchik and Maisk regions of the republic has grown bigger than the average of the Russian Federation," it said in a statement on Chechen rebel Web site www.kavkazcenter.com.

"According to Shariat (Islamic law), illegal production and distribution of drugs is punished by the death penalty."

Islamic radicalism, called Wahhabism in Russia, has spread in the North Caucasus and is seen as inspiring many of the most deadly Chechen attacks, including Beslan, where more than 330 hostages died.

Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev has branded the entire region a "breeding ground for Wahhabism," and officials link the radicals to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda movement.



 
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