Three Russian police officers were killed on Tuesday when their jeep came under fire from grenade launchers in the Chechen capital Grozny, the spokesman for Russian forces in the volatile region said. The attack in a residential area came as a group of reporters visited the capital on a Kremlin-organised tour to showcase its plan to bring peace to Chechnya after a decade of fighting that has killed tens of thousands of people. “As a result of this attack, three people were killed and two wounded. They are interior ministry officers who arrived from the Urals region,” Russian forces spokesman Ilya Shabalkin told a news conference. Russia, which sent troops back into Chechnya in 1999 after three years of de facto independence, says it has established nominal control over the mainly Muslim territory on its southern rim. But troops and police are killed almost daily by separatist rebels and recent suicide bombings in Moscow have sparked fears that the violence is spreading beyond the borders of Chechnya. “From July, the number of attacks has risen considerably,” a senior officer in the local police told Reuters. Tuesday’s attack also came just under a week before the deadline of an amnesty which gives separatists until September 1 to hand over their weapons. Full Story
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