Riots in southern Russian province: dozen people injured

More than a dozen people were injured Monday during riots in a village in the southern Russian province of Dagestan which had been triggered by a land dispute, officials said. The riots erupted when some of 1,000 protesters in the village of Kumtorkala attempted to seize a local administration building. They hurled stones at riot police, who fired warning shots in the air.

Photo: Riots in southern Russian province: dozen people injured

Local police spokesman Salimkhan Kachikayev said at least five people were wounded by ricocheting bullets. But Anzhela Martirosova, a spokeswoman for the regional branch of Russia's Interior Ministry, said later that only one man received a gunshot wound and 16 others were hospitalized with injuries.

RIA Novosti news agency quoted local doctor Abdulmajid Temirkhanov as saying that one protester received a gunshot wound, but 19 others were treated with injuries. The dispute focused on local authorities' decision to sell off lands that once belonged to a state farm. The move angered local residents who defended their rights for the land.

Some local residents on Monday also engaged in a fist fight with new land owners until police pulled them apart. Dagestan, a Caspian Sea region that neighbors Chechnya to the east, has remained restive, plagued by violence spilling over from Chechnya and also blamed on local criminal gangs.

A local businessman was shot dead by unidentified assailants Sunday in his apartment in the provincial capital, Makhachkala. His two nieces, aged 2 and 13, were also killed, and his wife and a 7-year-old son were wounded in the attack, city police spokeswoman Marina Rasulova said. Other southern regions in the Caucasus also have been volatile. In the province of Karachayevo-Cherkessiya, an officer of the regional task police force was detained Sunday on suspicion of being linked to Chechnya-based rebels, the Russian Interior Ministry's branch in southern Russia said in a statement, reports the AP.

N.U.