© Video still from RT broadcast
Four police officers have been killed and another three sustained injuries in Russia's Republic of Chechnya as they attempted to detain a suspected suicide bomber. The young man detonated improvised explosive when police attempted to search him.
The incident happened ahead of a concert dedicated to City Day. According to the Internal Affairs Ministry, police forces noticed a suspicious man outside a concert hall.
"
Police officers who were manning metal detectors at the entrance of the concert hall noticed a suspicious young man. When the police officers decided to check the individual, the man blew himself up," a local police officer told RIA news agency.
Arriving at the scene, the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, said the suicide bomber approached security forces and introduced himself as "
a law enforcement staffer." Police still proceeded to search him, Kadyrov added.
There were no immediate reports of civilian deaths or injuries, the Ministry said.
Despite local media initially claiming the suicide bomber survived, Russia's National Anti-Terror Committee said the man died along with the victims of the blast. Police identified him as a local citizen, who appears to have left home two months ago.
Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev has ordered to posthumously award the four police officers who "
have stopped a terrorist and did not let him come to a place, where a public event was to be held."
The area around the concert hall in the city of Grozny, which is home to over 280,000 people, most of them Chechens, is still cordoned off. Two criminal cases were launched following the blast.
Russia's southern Republic of Chechnya, along with neighboring Dagestan and Ingushetia, has been facing the continuous threat of terrorism against the civilian population.
In April 2009, Russia announced the end of its decade-long counter-terrorism operation against militants in Chechnya. However, sporadic terrorist attacks inside the region and beyond continue.
In recent years the epicenter of violence has shifted from Chechnya to Russia's other mainly-Muslim North Caucasian republics of Ingushetia, Dagestan and Kabardino-Balkaria.
Comment: Interesting timing. The only question is, whodunnit: USrael, or USrael with Arab Monarch partners?
The U.S. recently began bombing Syria - supposedly to eradicate IS (which it created) but actually to pursue its agenda of toppling the Assad government and gaining a new geopolitical foothold in the region. The only thing standing in its way is Moscow's complete refusal to allow this to happen, as demonstrated last year when the Russians placed naval ships off the shore of Syria as a show of its willingness to defend the country militarily,
and helped diffuse an impending attack on Syria through some impressive diplomatic moves, ie. the negotiated destruction of Syria's chemical weapons. Now the U.S. is coming very close once again to crossing the line of death and destruction in the name of humanitarianism. And the U.S. knows that Russia knows this. But 'gosh-golly-darn', those freedom-loving Americans just can't help themselves, can they?
Saudi Arabia has a big stake in toppling Assad and is closely aligned with the U.S.'s objectives. They have not only helped foment the rebels in Syria, but would like to have a large financial cut in the gas pipeline that will be built within it. So this recent, seemingly isolated lone suicide bomber, could well be a message from both Saudi Arabia and the U.S.: don't interfere with what we're trying to do, or we'll make trouble for you within your borders. But as the U.S. and Saudi Arabia probably should have gathered by now, Putin doesn't scare easily.
See also:
that knowing we now know about the lengths the US government will go to in order to control the world even more directly that this does seem like a pure Western plot to destabilize the government with seeming domestic terrorism. If Russia is supposed to be a more corrupt version of the US police state, then no Russian person would be stupid enough to let themselves be talked into this.