A shootout between the Chechen president's personal protection detail and suspected separatist insurgents left 19 people dead early on Sunday, including five civilians, officials and media reports said.
At least 12 suspected insurgents and two security officers were killed when the rebels
entered Tsentoroi, Ramzan Kadyrov's home village, his spokesman Alvi Karimov told
The Associated Press. TV reports said five civilians were killed in the crossfire.
Kadyrov, who is thought to regularly supervise security operations in the field, was in the village at the time and directed the counter-offensive, Karimov said.
"We let them into the village so they couldn't escape," Kadyrov told Channel One
television, which showed him examining the bodies of the suspected militants strewn
across a road. "We forced them into a place where they could be eliminated," he said.
An AP reporter at the scene saw fire-ravaged and bullet-ridden homes, with body parts
lying among the rubble.
Resident Vargan Edelgeriyeva, 48, said the gunbattle started at about 3 am at a
construction site about 150 meters away from Kadyrov's residence.
Militants entered local homes but were quickly surrounded, Edelgeriyeva said. In one
house an insurgent detonated explosives, perhaps a grenade, killing himself and a 30-
year-old resident, she said.
Police in 2009 averted a possible assassination attempt on Kadyrov, shooting dead the driver of a car suspected of containing explosives before he could reach a construction site where Kadyrov was due to make an appearance.
In a separate incident on Sunday, security forces in nearby Dagestan province shot dead
four suspected militants travelling in two cars when they refused to stop at a police
checkpoint, according to police spokesman Magomed Tagirov. He said weapons were
later found in the cars.
Russia's volatile North Caucasus suffers daily attacks by insurgents seeking
independence from Moscow, but this weekend's bloodshed has been especially fierce.
On Saturday, nine suspected militants were killed in two separate shootouts with police
in the Kabardino-Balkariya republic, while five suspected militants and two police
officers were killed in another shootout in Dagestan.
Kadyrov previously fought on the side of the rebels but switched sides and was installed
by the Kremlin as Chechen leader in 2007. Comparative peace has arrived in Chechnya
and its capital, Grozny, since then, but rights activists say the price has been brutal.
They allege Kadyrov has directed widespread human rights violations, including
abductions and summary executions of suspected rebels and sympathisers.