"Cleansings", killings and indiscriminate shooting in the Shali district, shelling of the street. Gudermes

June 20, 2001

***
On the border of Chechnya and Dagestan, there was a clash between the Russian military and members of the armed formations of the CRI. The shootout lasted about two hours. There are losses on both sides. According to local residents, the participants of the CRI WF lost two people, the Russian military, along with the wounded, lost at least 20.

***
On June 20 and 21, Russian military units and police officers carried out “cleansing operations” in the villages of Mesker-Yurt and Chiri-Yurt in the Shali region. In Urus-Martan, a similar operation has been carried out for the fourth day. Since June 19, according to local residents, more than 10 people have been detained in this city under various pretexts.

***
Russian helicopters fired on Gudermesskaya street in the Oktyabrsky district of Grozny. At least one car burned down. The military, who promptly arrived at the scene of the shelling in trucks and armored personnel carriers, began to stop passing vehicles and disembark the men. Then they were taken away. How many people were detained and what happened to them later is unknown.

Asya (surname not named at her request): “We were returning from the city to the village of Starye Atagi. We drove out to Gudermesskaya Street when a helicopter took off from Khankala and fired a rocket. We saw a car burning on the road and shelling going on. We were all on the ground. When I raised my head, I saw how the military stopped the men, took away their passports and tore them up. They said: "You don't need passports in the next world." The men were severely beaten, kicked, butted, then thrown into cars and armored personnel carriers. Where they were taken, we do not know. One old man saved us, me and my neighbor. Through the fence we climbed into his yard. He saw that we were being saved, and He sheltered us.”

***
An incident occurred at a checkpoint near the village of Mesker-Yurt in the Shali district, during which at least two local residents were killed and several people were injured.

As eyewitnesses say, it all started with a collision of a car of employees of Russian law enforcement agencies with a passenger car used by a local resident as a taxi. Other soldiers ran to the scene. They dragged the taxi driver and his passenger out of the cab and started beating them. The passenger died almost immediately from the beatings. The taxi driver, however, managed to snatch a pistol from the "siloviki" and shot two of them before he was killed.

The military fired in all directions, as a result of which the KAVZ regular bus, which was 50 meters away, was also riddled. Six passengers were injured of varying severity (inaccuracies are possible in the spelling of names and surnames):

1. Petimat Zubairaeva, born in 1955, through a bullet wound in the right thigh;
2. Galgi Iriskhanov, born in 1954, resident of Tsotsin-Yurt;
3. Amanta Usparova, born in 1964, blind shrapnel wound to the right shoulder blade and lumbar region;
4. Kharon Vakhaev, born in 1948, bullet wound to the leg with bone damage;
5. Zura Dzhamaldaeva (Vashaeva), born in 1962, gunshot wound to the left leg with a bone fracture;
6. Aynet Atayeva, both hands are injured.

The wounded were taken to the hospitals of the district center of Kurchaloy and the village of Tsotsin-Yurt, Kurchaloy district. In total, about forty people were injured during the incident.

***
At about 11 p.m., a 20-year-old resident of the village of Makhkety, Vedeno district, Magomed Ersimerzaev, was killed in his own house. The crime was committed by unknown persons. Local residents believe that they were Russian soldiers.

MEDIA REPORTS
***
Early in the morning, on the outskirts of the village of Khochi-Irze, Nozhai-Yurtovsky district, a 13-year-old teenager was killed. Unknown persons fired on the twin brothers Yakub and Turko Arsanukaev from the forest. According to the head of the administration, Isita Gairbekova, Yakub received multiple bullet wounds and died on the spot. Turco was taken to the hospital with shrapnel wounds.

***
In the Zavodskoy district of Grozny, a group of unknown armed men in camouflage uniforms attacked police officer Usman Khatuyev. According to the Zavodskoy District Department of Internal Affairs, unknown persons beat U.Khatuev, seized his Makarov service pistol and fled in Volga and Zhiguli vehicles.

***
In the Grozny hospital No. 9, without regaining consciousness, police officer Ruslan Yevsmurzaev died. He was fired on the northern outskirts of the capital of the republic.

***
Another series of killings of civilians has been committed in Chechnya. In the village of Gekhi, Urus-Martan District, unidentified persons shot a local resident Soltan Eskaev with shots in the head. In the village of Tsotsin-Yurt, Kurchaloevsky district, Khan-Ali Umaev was killed in his house. Doctors counted ten bullet wounds on his body.


From the book "People Live Here", Usam Baisaev, Dmitry Grushkin, 2006

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