SUICIDE BOMBERS SEIZE CHECHEN PARLIMENT

GROZNY - Militants on Tuesday stormed and seized the parliament building in Russia’s troubled region of Chechnya, taking hostages and killing at least two security guards, officials said.

Heavily-armed unspecified number of militants and suicide bombers stormed into the Parliament building in the provincial capital Grozny as speaker Dukuwakha Abdurahmanov was inside the premises, according to RIA Novosti news agency report.

• As militants raced into the building after overpowering the guards, a suicide bomber blew himself up on the grounds of the premises near the office of speaker, killing two people and wounding many others.
• According to other reports, the militants have also launched simultaneous attacks on other state buildings in a most deadly attack since 2004 Beslan high school hostage crisis.Speaker Abdurahmanov, who was in the parliament building, was reported to be safe.
• NTV channel said the sporadic firing could still be heard from inside the parliament building and authorities rushed commando teams to suppress the militant attack.
• “At the moment the shooting is continuing and special units of interior ministry troops, riot police and the Chechen presidential security service are arriving at the building,” a security source told Interfax.
• It said that according to some sources the shooting was in the office of the parliament speaker.The attack coincided with the visit of Federal Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev to Grozny, who was immediately informed about the attack.

Interfax reported that in two suicide blasts at least four guards were killed and Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov is personally carrying the operation to flush out the militants from the building.
In 2004, over 330 people were killed in Russia’s most shocking hostage tragedy when Chechen militants stormed a school in the town of Beslan in the Northern Cacuasus region of North Ossetia.

Source:RIA Novosti