Nine wounded in Ingushetia

Nine police officers sustained gunshot wounds and injuries as a result of an attack by unidentified persons on a police checkpoint in the republic's Malgobek district on the border with Chechnya yesterday, on 7 December. This is what a source with Ingushetia's law enforcement agencies told Caucasian Knot's correspondent.

"Several officers of the Ingush Internal Affairs Ministry's riot police suffered in a skirmish with a group of unidentified persons driving VAZ-2199 and Gazel vehicles in the afternoon yesterday. The vehicles were going towards Chechnya when the police officers stopped them for a usual examination, according to preliminary information. However, people in the vehicles refused to pass registration required to cross the border. A quarrel broke out between them and the checkpoint policemen. The people in the vehicles fired automatic weapons at the police officers and started to beat them. They next managed to go away from the scene," said the source.

At the same time, Ingushetia's Internal Affairs Ministry has not confirmed or denied this information. The Ministry's press service has so far declined any comment on this score.

However, Interfax's source says that the unknown attackers went towards Goragorsk, Chechnya. Nine police officers were admitted to hospitals in Grozny and Malgobek. According to the interlocutor, the vehicles were stopped at the checkpoint for an examination linking to information about an abducted 40-year-old resident of Nizhniye Achaluki, Malgobek district.

• Two killed, two wounded in Ingushetia