Russia admits militants remain strong in Caucasus

By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV,Associated Press Writer

MOSCOW – Militants remain a strong challenge to Russian authorities in the North Caucasus, the president said Wednesday _ reversing months of Kremlin assurances that stability was returning to the restive southern region.

President Dmitry Medvedev called for new measures to "radically" improve the situation in the region, where militants have fought two separatist wars in Chechnya since 1994 and still mount regular attacks against law enforcement in neighboring regions.

"Some time ago, we got an impression that the situation regarding terrorism in the Caucasus has significantly improved," Medvedev said at a meeting with security officials in the southern city of Stavropol. "Regrettably, recent events have shown it's not the case."

On Monday, militants staged the region's worst attack in years, ramming a truck through the Nazran police headquarters in Ingushetia and detonating a massive amount of explosives. The death toll from the attack reached 25 on Wednesday, after four more bodies were removed from the wreckage. Of the more than 160 people injured, 70 are still hospitalized, Ingushetia's deputy leader Ruslan Tsechoyev said.

The bombing unraveled Kremlin claims that it has managed to bring calm and prosperity to the impoverished region's patchwork of ethnic groups, clans and religions.

It also stoked new fears that Ingushetia, located west of Chechnya, has become the region's main battleground. An officer of the Federal Security Service was shot to death Wednesday in his car near Nazran, according to the federal prosecutor's Investigative Committee in Ingushetia.

Medvedev called Wednesday for tougher measures to fight militants.

"We must continue to fight them without ceremony and liquidate them without any emotions or hesitation, or we won't succeed," Medvedev said.

He also warned officials they could lose their jobs if they failed to properly protect their men. Medvedev had fired Ingushetia's top police official after Monday's attack, saying he failed to take safety precautions that could have reduced the number of victims.

"People have been killed because of the absence of elementary safety means," Medvedev said, without elaborating on what safety measures might not have been followed. "It's unforgivable, it's simply a crime."

While Chechnya has become more stable after the two separatist wars since 1994, violence has risen in Chechnya's neighboring provinces of Ingushetia and Dagestan.

A recent suicide bombing badly wounded Ingushetia's Kremlin-appointed leader Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, who blamed militants that regularly battle security forces in the forests along the mountainous Chechen border.

In Dagestan, which lies east of Chechnya, police clashed with militants Wednesday, killing three of them, said spokesman Mark Tolchinsky of the region's Interior Ministry branch.