MOSCOW (AP) – Chechnya’s leader with Kremlin support said on Wednesday that his forces had killed six suspected militants, including a warlord accused of plotting a 2011 suicide bombing at a Moscow airport.
Ramzan Kadyrov, the regional leader of Chechnya, said troops under his command tracked down the suspects in the village of Qatar-Yurt and killed everyone on the spot. Kadyrov claims that the raid eliminates the elimination of the last group of militants left in the region.
“All underground bands in Chechnya have now been eliminated,” Kadyrov said on his blog. He added that the security sweeper had been planned for a long time and followed up on two previous unsuccessful attempts to hunt down the militants.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russian President Vladimir Putin had called to congratulate Kadyrov, who had personally taken part in the security auction.
Kadyrov said the killers also included warlord Aslan Byutukayev, who is accused by Russian authorities of involvement in the January 2011 suicide bombing in the oncoming area of Moscow’s Domodedovo airport that killed 37 people. Byutukayev appears in a video with top Chechen warlord Doku Umarov and the suicide bomber.
Umarov, who also claimed responsibility for several other attacks in Russia, was killed in a security attack in 2013.
After Umarov’s death, Byutukayev became the leader of militants in Chechnya and swore allegiance to the Islamic State group. He was on the Russian search list for his involvement in the airport bombing in 2011 and other attacks.
The Kremlin relied on Kadyrov to stabilize Chechnya after two separatist wars in the 1990s and early 2000s and provided generous subsidies to help rebuild the region.
International human rights groups have accused Kadyrov of unlawfully violating rights, including arbitrary arrests and extrajudicial killings by his dreaded security forces.
Despite Kadyrov’s relentless repression of suspected extremists, some of whom swore allegiance to the Islamic State group, militants continued to launch sporadic attacks in Chechnya and other regions of the North Caucasus in Russia.