After last summer?s barrage of terrorist attacks perpetrated by Chechen Rebels against Russia and its other territories (Terrorism), culminating in the horrific school siege in Beslan, North Ossetia , it seemed that Russia had had enough and went on a major offensive against the Chechen Rebels. At first, it seemed that they were successful. The number of major attacks against civilian targets fell (this could have been because the Chechen Rebels had a limited operational time period due to both resource availability and heightened security after a series of incidents), and it seemed that the Chechen Rebels were on the defensive rather than the offensive. Russian security forces paraded their offensive operations, culminating in the death of Chechen Rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov (Intel Report). But, after a long winter, it seems that the rebels have re-emerged with a new vigor and orchestrated campaign. More recently, there have been unsuccessful attacks against the transportation infrastructure — the bombing of a train between Chechnya and Moscow — and a civilian target.

The attacks against security and police forces in Chechnya have been successful. And, it seems that rebel forces and other groups are thinking very carefully about how to bring or lure security forces to the battleground of their choice in order to ambush them. In this most recent incident , security forces were responding to what they thought was a shoot-out but what was, in fact, a clever ruse in which the terrorists placed a corpse in a vehicle and started shooting. When security forces arrived, a bomb detonated; some 13 people were killed in this ambush. Earlier in July, Russian security forces were killed by a remote controlled bomb that went of under their truck, as they were visiting a bathhouse in Makhachkala . Another, similar incident occurred in January 2002 . In the July 2005 case, Jamaat Shariat , a Dagestani militant group, took responsibility for the attack. Also in early July, a policeman and soldier were killed in an ambush in Burgaloi, Chechnya while en route to investigate the killing of a village mayor, Abdul-Azim Yangulbayev. It seems violence is spilling over between Chechnya and Dagestan.

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