Russian special forces backed up by heavy armour Thursday stormed an apartment block where a group of suspected Islamic militants had been holed up for more than 36 hours in a republic near war-torn Chechnya. After more than five hours of battle amid booms of exploding grenades and the racket of machine gun fire, Russian officials proclaimed victory and said that all seven militants had been killed in the assault, including their leader.
Two members of the elite SOBR unit were wounded.
"Today we carried out a successful operation against (the radical Islamic group) Yarmuk and its leader Muslim Atayev," Russian Deputy Interior Minister Arkady Yedelev told reporters in front of the smouldering building.
He added that two women were among the dead rebels, who were "active members of the group and were also armed." A local interior ministry official earlier had said that four of the seven militants killed were women.
After negotiations failed to secure the surrender of the rebels, who had been surrounded since late Tuesday in the building on the outskirts of Kabardino-Balkaria's regional capital Nalchik, elite troops started an assault at around 8:30 am (0530 GMT).
Plumes of black smoke rose into the sky under a thick blanket of snow as the attack on the gray five-story building blasted a massive hole over two stories of the edifice and a fire broke out.
Armoured personnel carriers mounted with heavy machine-guns fired at the rebels.
The Russian forces made preparations for the assault during the night, evacuating local residents from the scene and positioning snipers around the perimeter. The building's gas, water and electricity were cut off as some 300 police and security agents surrounded the structure.