Bomb Kills Chechen President, Several Others
Sun May 9, 2004
By Richard Balmforth
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin's top man in Chechnya
was assassinated in a bomb attack Sunday that killed several other people,
dealing a huge blow to the Kremlin leader's efforts to stamp out rebellion
there.
Moscow's senior soldier in the rebel province was also fighting for his life
after being seriously wounded by the blast that tore through the VIP section
of a stadium where dignitaries were gathered to celebrate the 1945 victory
over Nazi Germany.
The exact number of dead was not clear. Itar-Tass news agency put the death
toll at 14 but later quoted the Emergencies Ministry as saying there were
only four dead. Other unconfirmed reports said the number of dead was much
higher.
Putin himself, sworn in only Friday for a second four-year term, announced
the death of Akhmad Kadyrov, president of the region and a key player in
Kremlin plans to crush the bloody separatist rebellion.
"Kadyrov passed away on May 9 on the day of our national holiday," a
shaken-looking Putin said standing alongside Kadyrov's son, Ramzan, in the
Kremlin.
Reuters journalist Adlan Khasanov, who was covering the event, was among
those killed, his brother said. Khasanov, 33, had worked as both a Reuters
photographer and television cameraman since the late 1990s, mostly in his
native Chechnya.
The attack on the top-security event attended by military and political
officials was one of the most audacious by Chechen rebels on Russian forces
and the administration in mainly-Muslim Chechnya since Russian troops
reoccupied the area in 1999.
"The bomb was placed inside a concrete part of the stadium," said Khamid
Kadayev, Chechnya's deputy interior minister, speaking on television from
the scene of the blast.
He said this meant the bomb escaped detection in security sweeps ahead of
the event. He did not say how the bomb could have been smuggled in, but
reconstruction work had been going on at the stadium for the past three
months.
The commander of Russian forces in the region, General Valery Baranov, was
among many injured. One of his legs was torn off in the blast and he was in
critical condition undergoing surgery, Interfax news agency said.
Interior Ministry officials said an artillery shell, primed to explode, had
also been found in a neighboring stand.
Continued ...
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=5082058
--
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who met with Bush in Texas earlier this
month (April 2004), told the French newspaper Le Monde that "there exists
today a hatred [of America] never equaled in the region." And Jordan's King
Abdullah, already in the US, abruptly cancelled a scheduled visit to the
White House last week.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0426/p02s02-usfp.html
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