Suicide bombers infiltrate crowds but official escapes assassination

By FRED WEIR in Moscow

Two female suicide bombers infiltrated a religious festival in Chechnya yesterday and killed 30 people in an attack which Russia immediately linked to Tuesday's Riyadh bombings.

President Vladimir Putin said "the signature in both places is identical".

He said a Saudi-born Islamic fundamentalist named Abu Walid had planned the attack, but Putin had no proof to back up the claim.

Abu Walid is believed to have replaced Omar bin Khattab as one of the Chechen rebel movement's prominent leaders. Khattab, a Saudi-born warlord, is alleged to have been killed by poisoning last year in Chechnya.

The attacks came two days after suicide bombers detonated a truck bomb in a Government compound in northern Chechnya, killing 59.

Russian officials claim the attacks are not the work of rebels, but part of a global assault on non-Muslim powers by international terrorists. In Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, at least 34 people, including seven Americans, were killed in Tuesday's triple suicide bombing at expatriate compounds.

By linking unrest in Chechnya to the United States-led war on terror, Russia has largely avoided Western criticism for its crackdown on the Chechen population.

Yesterday's bombers were apparently trying to kill Akhmad Kadyrov, the head of Chechnya's Moscow-backed Administration.

Russian news reports said Kadyrov was among 15,000 people attending the Muslim religious festival in the village of Byelorechye, near the capital Grozny, but he escaped unharmed when the bombers detonated explosive-laden belts amid the crowds.

Chechnya has fought two wars with Russia since declaring independence when the Soviet Union was breaking up in 1991. Russian officials say the first war, between 1994 and 1996, was motivated by Chechen nationalism.

But after Chechnya won de facto independence, they say the republic was flooded with money and hardened Muslim fighters - veterans of the war against the Soviet Army in Afghanistan. Chechnya then became a launchpad for a terrorist campaign against Russia and the West, they claimed.

The Kremlin is eager to convince Western countries who have been critical of Russia's often-brutal war in Chechnya that Chechen rebels are merely a branch operation of the same world terrorist conspiracy responsible for the September 11 attacks.

Colonel Ilya Shabalkin, head of the FSB security service's operations in Chechnya, said yesterday: "All terrorist acts committed on Chechen territory are financed by international terrorist organisations, including al Qaeda."

Chechnya's rebel leaders were "puppets in the hands of international terrorists and do everything they are told to do".

The conflict, which kills about a dozen Russian troops a week, has become a political liability for Putin, who faces re-election within a year. Some Russians fear the violence in Chechnya threatens to undermine stability in the whole country.

- INDEPENDENT