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Wednesday, 19.09.2007
Dagestan: Tanks called in to take out top terrorist
Machatshkala. The head of the Islamist terror movement in Dagestan is dead. The battle to corner Rappani Chalilov lasted several hours.
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After years of searching, Russian anti-terror units finally tracked Rabbani – his nomme de guerre – down to a house in the village of Novy Sulak near Kililyurt. The capture of two of his Rabbani’s men led them to his hideout, according to the newspaper Kommersant.
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The Kaspiisk bomber
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Chalilov committed numerous terror acts in the Russian Caucasian republic of Dagestan. The worst of these was the bomb he detonated during the military parade on the 9th May, 2002, to celebrate the end of the Second World War. The bomb killed 45 people.
In August, 2006, he was responsible for ambushing and assassinating the Bujnask state prosecutor and the Dagestani interior minister.
The building was surrounded by units of the FSB security service and the police. Calls to surrender were met with automatic weapons fire.
The house burned down after the first exchange of fire, but the resistance continued: It was subsequently established that the deep cement-walled cellar was fortified, so that the two men could mount prolonged resistance.
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Tanks take on two men and a cellar
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Then the army was called in. A tank group bombarded and completely destroyed the bunker. Two corpses were dug out of the ruins, one of which was identified as Rabbani by an old scar and statement of his arrested companions.
Besides large stocks of weapons and ammunition, the anti-terrorist unit found two laptops now being searched for information on the terrorists’ contacts and finance channels.
Putin’s Dagestan adviser Aslambek Aslachanov now expects the number of terrorists in Dagestan to decrease: “The leader’s role is very important in organising crimes like his. He is the idea generator and creates the conditions for an attack,“ he told Kommersant.
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Aslachanov, however, said that this did not mean there would necessarily be an increase in security in Dagestan: The republic has a high level of crime with no terrorist connection, he said.
(ld/rufo/St.Petersburg)
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