On June 6, 2000, the 17-year-old Khava Barayeva (relative of Arbi Barayev), accompanied by 16-year-old Luiza Magomadova, drove a truck loaded with explosives through a checkpoint of an OMON base at Alkhan-Yurt in Chechnya. Barayeva detonated her bomb outside the barracks, killing a number of paramilitary police troops (rebels claimed up to 27 were killed, but the Russians claimed only two were killed and five were injured).
Another suicide bombing, which killed two OMON troops at a checkpoint leading to the Khankala base, was carried five days later on June 11 by a former Russian prisoner of warSergey Dimitriyev who had converted to Islam and joined the rebels while in captivity.
OMON is a system of military special police units within the Armed Forces of Russia. It previously operated within the structures of the Soviet and Russian Ministries of Internal Affairs (MVD). Originating as the special forces unit of the Soviet Militsiya in 1988, it has played major roles in several armed conflicts during and following the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Black Widow or Shahidka, is a term for Islamist Chechen female suicide bombers, willing to be a manifestation of violent jihad. They became known at the Moscow theater hostage crisis of October 2002. The commander Shamil Basayev referred to the shahidkas as a part of force of his suicide bombers called the Riyad-us Saliheen Brigade of Martyrs. Basayev also stated that he himself trained at least fifty of the Black Widows. The female suicide bombers have carried out over 65% of the 23 terrorist attacks linked to the Chechen movement since 2000. The Black Widows are associated with terrorist attacks in Chechnya between 1999 and 2005.
The 1999–2000 battle of Grozny was the siege and assault of the Chechen capital Grozny by Russian forces, lasting from late 1999 to early 2000. This siege and assault of the Chechen capital resulted in the widespread devastation of Grozny. In 2003, the United Nations designated Grozny as the most destroyed city on Earth due to the extensive damage it suffered. The battle had a devastating impact on the civilian population. It is estimated that between 5,000 and 8,000 civilians were killed during the siege, making it the bloodiest episode of the Second Chechen War.
Human rights violations were committed by the warring sides during the second war in Chechnya. Both Russian officials and Chechen rebels have been regularly and repeatedly accused of committing war crimes including kidnapping, torture, murder, hostage taking, looting, rape, decapitation, and assorted other breaches of the law of war. International and humanitarian organizations, including the Council of Europe and Amnesty International, have criticized both sides of the conflict for blatant and sustained violations of international humanitarian law.
In June 2000, the North Caucasian Chechen separatist-led Chechen insurgents added suicide bombing to their tactics in their struggle against Russia. Since then, there have been dozens of suicide attacks within and outside the republic of Chechnya, resulting in thousands of casualties among Russian security personnel and civilians. The profiles of the suicide bombers have varied, as have the circumstances surrounding the bombings.
The Novye Aldi massacre was the mass murder of Chechen civilians on February 5, 2000, in which Russian forces went on a cleansing operation (zachistka) summarily executing dozens of civilians. The village had been cluster-bombed a day prior to the massacre, and local residents urged to come out for inspection the next day. Upon entering the village, Russian forces shot their victims in cold blood, with automatic fire at close range. The killings were accompanied by looting, rape, arson and robbery. As a result of the deadly rampage by Russian forces, up to 82 civilians were killed in the spree. Houses of civilians were burnt in an attempt to destroy evidence of summary executions and other crimes. Looting took place on a large scale and organised manner.
The 2000 Zhani-Vedeno ambush took place on March 29, 2000, when a mechanized column of special Russian Military Police troops was ambushed in the southern Vedensky District of Chechnya. As the result of the attack on the convoy and on Russian relief forces, scores of Russian special police and paramilitary troops were killed or captured. 40 OMON officers in the column and six in a relief column were killed and 11 more were taken hostage, 9 of whom were executed soon after Russian command refused to swap them for the arrested Russian commander Yuri Budanov.
Vilayat Dagestan, formerly known as Shariat Jamaat, was an Islamist Jihadist group based in the Russian republic of Dagestan and is part of the Caucasus Emirate. The group is closely associated with the separatist conflicts in the nearby Russian republics of Chechnya and Ingushetia, and was created during the Second Chechen War in favor of Dagestan's independence as an Islamic state.
The Battle of Komsomolskoye took place in Chechnya during the Second Chechen War. Beginning on 6 March 2000 and lasting until 24 March 2000, it resulted in the deaths of more than 50 Russian soldiers and hundreds of Chechen militants over the course of two weeks of siege warfare. An unknown number of civilians were killed in the fighting as well. The fighting resulted in the destruction of most of the Chechen separatist units commanded by Ruslan Gelayev. Scores of Chechens were taken prisoner by the Russian military, and only a few survived the ensuing Komsomolskoye massacre. Marked by fierce urban combat, the Battle of Komsomolskoye was the bloodiest of the entire conflict.
The July 2000 Chechnya suicide bombings happened on July 2-July 3, 2000, when Chechen insurgents launched five suicide bomb attacks on the Russian military and police headquarters and barracks within 24 hours. Russian officials claimed that six bombers killed at least 37 Russian troops and 11 civilians, and wounded more than 100 people.
The Grozny truck bombing occurred on 27 December 2002, when three Chechen suicide bombers ran vehicles into the heavily guarded republic's government headquarters in the regional capital Grozny.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
