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Yunus-Bek Yevkurov President Of Ingushetia Wounded In Attack

by Yuliya Talmazan | June 22, 2009 at 12:09 pm

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The President of the Russian Republic of Ingushetia Yunus-Bek Yevkurov was wounded in an assassination attempt but expected to survive. Russia's President Medvedev called the attack "an act of terror."

Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, the President of the Russian Republic of Ingushetia, was wounded on Monday on his way to work in the city of Nazran in what is believed to be an assassination attempt. Yevkurov received wounds to his chest, head and liver when a suicide bomber swerved his car filled with explosives into the Presidential motorcade. Yevkurov has now undergone surgery. His condition is said to be complex but stable. Ingushetia, with a population of just 500,000 people, neighbors the troubled Republic of Chechnya and has seen a surge of violence in recent weeks when several top government officials were shot dead.

"A car bomb was set off at about 08:20 Moscow time (0420 GMT), when a motorcade of the Ingush president was going by the highway," the Itar-Tass news agency quoted an officer from the republic's Interior Ministry as saying.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called the attack, in the city of Nazran, "an act of terror".

Mr Medvedev paid tribute to the progress made by Mr Yevkurov, saying: "The Ingush president did much recently both to bring order and... civil peace to the republic. The bandits did not like this activity."

Yevkurov, 45, was a former intelligence official who became the republic's president last October.

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sara star

at 12:21 on June 22nd, 2009

Suicide car bombings - a hallmark of Islamist rebels - are extremely rare in the North Caucasus.

But it is clear the person who carried out this attack had detailed information about where and when the president's motorcade would be on the move.

That makes some analysts wary of assuming that Islamic militants, fighting for independence from Russia, are the only possible suspects.

"A number of high-profile officials in the region were unhappy with Yevkurov's policies," says Grigory Shvedov, a leading regional expert.

"Impending dismissals in the government were probably the reason for this attempted assassination.

"Yevkurov was planning to introduce order, to fight corruption and to sack politicians suspected of graft."

So could officials from within the Ingush government have deliberately leaked the information about the president's motorcade to a militant organisation?