Four police officers wounded in roadside blast in Chechnya

Photo: Four police officers wounded in roadside blast in Chechnya

Aslan Israilov of the Memorial NGO and Bulat Chilayev of Civil Assistance disappeared April 9 in the village of Sernovodsk in the Sunzhensky district of Chechnya.

Members of the Memorial and Civil Assistance groups gathered in Grozny's main square, named after the late Kremlin-backed Chechen president Akhmad Kadyrov, carrying photographs of their abducted colleagues and slogans including "We demand an investigation of every abduction!"

Rights advocates and many Chechens accuse Russian soldiers and Chechen security forces, including forces loyal to Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov,  the late president's son,  of abducting, killing, and intimidating civilians in Chechnya, according to the AP.

Memorial said earlier this year that the number of kidnappings in Chechnya has fallen but it remains an acute problem. It said 316 people were abducted in 2005, of whom 127 are still missing and 23 were found dead. The group registered 396 abductions in Chechnya in 2004. In all, more than 1,800 Chechen civilians have been kidnapped since 2002, with about 1,000 of them yet to be found, Memorial said.

The regional Interior Ministry said that a bomb had exploded Wednesday at a roadside in the southern district of Vedeno, wounding four Chechen policemen who were accompanying a Russian military convoy. Clashes had broken out in the mountainous region the previous day.

Also Thursday, the Interior Ministry said that two Chechen police officers had been killed and seven wounded in rebel attacks in the provincial capital Grozny on Wednesday.

A car blew up and gunmen opened fire from automatic weapons on a group of police who arrived at the scene to investigate, killing one and wounding six. About an hour later, a gunman in a crowd of onlookers shot at police at the scene, killing one and injuring another, the ministry said.