Al Qaeda terrorists struck this large city in the Caucasus region on October 12, the capital of the Muslim republic of Kabardino-Balkaria bordering on Chechnya. This area is also a stones throw from the Beslan School, where the last raid by the adherants of the Religion of Peace caused 332 dead, mostly children.
Some 300 terrorists mounted simultaneous raids in Nalchik on 3 police headquarters, federal military bases, armories and the regional airport in the capital of the Muslim republic of Kabardino-Balkaria bordering on Chechnya. The police HQ caught fire, another police building was besieged and hostages were taken.
Putin sealed off the city and gave Russian security forces carte blanche on killing the terrorists and freeing the city. On October 13th, Russian federal troops and special forces supported by combat helicopters and armed vehicles engaged the terrorists in clashes during the day. At least 85 terrorists were killed in the assaults, but it's uncertain how many of the dead were civilians or how many terrorists escaped.
One thing that is certain is that the Islamist terrorists seized sizeable quantities of weapons in their raids on police stations and armories.
This is a strategic area for the Islamists, first because of the prescence of non-Arab ethnic Muslims (The Muslims in this region are mostly Circassians)but as a foil to American bases located in nearby Georgia. This area was a major staging ground for Saudi Wahhabis fighting in the Chechen rebellion against Russia. This group later left to join Abu Musab al Zarqawi’s terrorist army in Iraq..and al Qaeda moved in.
The story behind the story is that Putin is reportedly outraged at this breach of his agreement with Iran, who were supposed to cut off the flow of armed men and weapons to Chechnya in exchange for Putin selling the Mullahs arms and building nukes for them. I don't doubt that the wires between Moscow and Teheran were pretty busy.
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