Islamic Rebels Launch New Drive Into Dagestan

Islamic rebels in southern Russia reopened their war for independence Sunday by launching a new incursion into the republic of Dagestan just hours after a car bomb exploded in a military housing block there, killing at least 33 people.

Russian officials said the incursion and the car bomb were “links in the same chain,” demonstrating that despite Russian declarations of victory two weeks ago, religious and political unrest continues unabated in the Caucasus region.

The incursion by several thousand rebel fighters from bases in separatist Chechnya was the second into Dagestan in a month. In the first, the rebels seized control of half a dozen villages before retreating two weeks later. At the time, rebel leader Shamil Basayev warned that the guerrillas had completed only the first phase of their campaign to create a unified Islamic state out of Chechnya and Dagestan.

Also at the time, Russian officials claimed that the rebels had been roundly defeated by a punishing aerial and artillery campaign.

“Today it seems we are witnessing the beginning of the second stage,” Abdul Musayev, spokesman for Dagestan’s Interior Ministry, said Sunday. “The fighters have thoroughly planned the operation. Its goal is to undermine the constitutional order in Dagestan.”

The car bomb exploded shortly before 9:40 p.m. Saturday in Buynaksk, Dagestan’s second-largest city, outside an apartment building in a housing compound for the Russian army’s 156th Brigade.

By early today, 33 bodies had been pulled from the rubble and more than 100 people were reported injured, 53 of them seriously enough to be hospitalized. Dozens of people were still missing, and the death toll was expected to rise as rescuers recovered more bodies.

Many residents were home at the time of the blast watching a televised soccer match between France and Ukraine. Many of the victims were women and children.

The bomb was one of three apparently designed to detonate in succession, officials said, but police managed to defuse the other two, minutes before they were to go off.

Hours later, about 2 a.m. Sunday, as many as 2,000 rebel fighters crossed the border from Chechnya into Dagestan, seized control of four villages in the Novolakskoye district and began battling Russian forces, Musayev said. The area is about 40 miles north of the one the guerrillas seized in early August, and its population is believed to include ethnic Chechens as well as the Lak minority group, which has been increasingly restless in recent years.

“We are sure there is a direct link not only between the terrorist act in Buynaksk and the morning incursion into Novolakskoye but also between today’s incidents and the August intrusion,” Musayev said. “These acts are links in the same chain of attacks.”

Historical animosity between Russians and Muslim minorities in southern Russia has been aggravated by the grinding poverty and the powerful influence of fundamentalist Islam in the region.

Both Chechnya and Dagestan are largely Muslim. However, unlike Chechnya, Dagestan is a patchwork of dozens of ethnic groups, many with their own languages, and most remain loyal to Russia.

The most militant group in Dagestan is the multiethnic Wahhabi sect, which has its stronghold in the villages of Karamakhi and Chabanmakhi, about 30 miles south of the capital, Makhachkala. About two years ago, members of the sect declared the two villages to be an Islamic state and expelled Russian police and other signs of Russian authority.

After repelling the first rebel incursion last month, Russian forces decided to address the Wahhabi threat in Karamakhi and Chabanmakhi. For the past two weeks, they have been pounding the villages using helicopters and artillery to roust out the militants along with any of Basayev’s fighters taking refuge among them.

“The Russian Federation has had no authority over the villages of Karamakhi and Chabanmakhi for the past two years,” Russian Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin said in a TV interview Sunday. “If we continue to do nothing about the situation, it will be a crime against Russia. This erodes the Russian Federation from within.”

Chechnya fought a two-year war for independence from Russia that ended in a stalemate in 1996. Russia no longer has any control over Chechen territory, but no nations recognize Chechnya as an independent country.

The weekend’s events suggested that fighting in the region is likely to drag on for weeks. On Saturday, even before the blast at the military compound, Putin took primary responsibility for the operation from the Interior Ministry and reassigned it to the Russian military.

Russian officials say they are prepared to take any measures necessary to prevent the Dagestani conflict from escalating.