Author: Michael Wines
Publication: The New York Times
Date: December 29, 2002
Russia blamed Islamic terrorists,
including Arabs, today for a pair of explosions that devastated a government
center in Chechnya on Friday, as investigators tried to figure out how
three suicide bombers drove unmolested through a thicket of checkpoints
set up to shield the complex from just such attacks.
Tonight, Chechnya's new prime minister,
Mikhail Babich, said workers had recovered 52 bodies from the ruins of
the government complex. The Russian Emergencies Ministry said, however,
that that the true toll was closer to 57, because families of some of the
victims were believed to have taken away remains.
The suicide bombers, in a heavy
truck and a car, blew up a four-story government center and an adjacent
canteen that housed the top leaders and staff of the pro-Russian regional
government there. Several officials were seriously wounded, but Chechnya's
prime minister and the head of the civil administration were not in the
building and were unharmed.
A dragnet set up by Russian and
Chechen police and military forces failed today to lead to any arrests.
A Russian-language Web site often
used to promote Islamic guerrilla activities in Chechnya, www.kavkazcenter.net,
stated that an unnamed guerrilla commander had called to claim responsibility
for the bombing. "The building of the occupying administration was blown
up as a result of an attack by the Chechen shahids," or martyrs, the site
said.
A Russian counterterrorism official
in the Caucasus region, which includes Chechnya, said the attack was the
work of Islamic militants led by a prominent Chechen warlord, Shamil Basayev,
and an Arab, Abu al-Walid.
The counterterrorism official, Col.
Ilya Shabalkin, said Russian investigators had learned shortly before the
bombings that the two men had met in the Chechen village of Stariye Atagi,
15 milies south of Grozny, to plan a series of attacks on Grozny and other
Chechen towns.
On Thursday, Russian special operations
troops in Stariye Atagi killed a different Arab militant, whom Colonel
Shabalkin described as a coordinator of the planned attacks. "But we failed
to prevent the terrorist act," he said.
He described Mr. Walid as an official
of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic militant group frequently described
as a financier of the Chechen separatist movement.
Colonel Shabalkin described the
group in an interview last week as a rival to the official commander of
the Chechen militants, Aslan Maskhadov, a former president of Chechnya.
Mr. Maskhadov, who is in hiding, has been accused by some Russian officials
of plotting the bombings, but he renounced them in a message issued today.
Russia has frequently charged that
the Chechen separatist movement is controlled by foreign militants. There
was no way to verify Colonel Shabalkin's accusation.
As investigators began reconstructing
the events that led to the disaster today, it became clear that the bombers
and their accomplices had meticulously planned the attack.
Officials said preliminary checks
indicated that the heavy truck and a second jeeplike vehicle used to carry
more than a ton of explosives into the government compound had military
license plates. Their drivers, dressed in army camouflage, carried what
appeared to be official passes.
The two vehicles were said to have
passed freely through three military checkpoints on a major highway in
Grozny, then negotiated a military guardpost on the road to the government
complex without problems.
Only on the final turn toward the
complex did guards at a last checkpoint try to inspect the vehicles. The
drivers accelerated and broke through the checkpoint as guards fired on
them, then they detonated their bombs in a courtyard directly in front
of the main government building, investigators said.
