MOSCOW- Armed assailants injured several policemen in attacks in threelocations in the Russian republic of Chechnya on Monday, as the IslamicState group claimed responsibility.
Russia’s Investigative Committee said it had launched probes into threeseparate attacks against police, including a failed suicide bombing.
In the first attack on Monday morning, two men entered the district policedepartment in the town of Shali and wounded a pair of policemen withknives, investigators said in a statement.
The two assailants were shot dead, Chechnya’s interior ministry said.
In the village of Mesker-Yurt north of Shali, a man with a backpackattempted a suicide bombing near a police post but “police officers andcivilians were not harmed by the blast,” the Investigative Committee said.
The third incident occurred on the outskirts of the Chechen capital Grozny,where a man attempted to run over a traffic policeman in his car andsubsequently hit two more officers as he was chased.
“The criminals were neutralised,” the Investigative Committee said.
IS claimed responsibility for the attacks, the SITE monitoring groupreported, citing the jihadists’ main propaganda agency Amaq.
“Fighters from the Islamic State attacked Chechen police officers andelements in Grozny and Shali in Mesker-Yurt,” Amaq said, according to SITE.
Chechnya’s strongman leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who was visiting Saudi Arabiaon Monday, said extremist propaganda that “confuses the young men” was toblame for the assaults.
He said the attacks were staged on Monday to “darken” the festivities aheadof Tuesday, when Muslims begin to celebrate the Islamic Eid al-Adha holiday.
He said the man who attempted to stage the suicide bombing was injured andwas in hospital.
“The situation in Grozny and Chechnya is absolutely calm,” he said.
Chechnya’s interior minister Ruslan Alkhanov said the assailants “attemptedto destabilise the situation in Chechnya” but have been stopped. He said noofficers were killed.
Moscow battled separatists in two brutal wars in the 1990s in Chechnya andhas since installed Kadyrov, a former separatist turned Kremlin loyalist,to rule the republic with an iron fist.
After the defeat of Chechen insurgents, Russian authorities have beenlocked in a simmering conflict with Islamist militants from across theNorth Caucasus that has killed scores of civilians and police. – APP/AFP