KHANKALA, February 14 (AVN) - Officers of temporary Interior departments in Chechnya have carried out 24 search and preventive operations in the past 24 hours, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry department for Chechnya said on Wednesday.
Policemen checked 29,683 people and 15,299 vehicles and registered 99 administrative offences, including 21 violations of passport rules, the spokesman told the Military News Agency. They seized a grenade launcher, seven assault rifles, a pistol, 81 grenade launcher rounds, 55 hand grenades, 24 artillery shells, 30kg of plastic explosives, 9kg of TNT and 0.45kg of drugs. Besides, eight explosive devices and eight illegal oil refineries were destroyed.
Law-enforcers have come under fire 22 times since Tuesday, the spokesman said. Rebels detonated a heavy landmine in the village of Novye Atagi in the southern Chechen Shali district when policemen of the Ryazan quick-response detachment were carrying out a search operation. No officers were hurt.
Three locals aged 26 to 37 trying to plant a mine near an Interior Ministry troops checkpoint in Grozny's Starorpomyslovsky district were detained by law-enforcers at about 21.00 Moscow time (1800 GMT) on Tuesday. Policemen in the town of Argun detained a 30-year-old local that is suspected of being a guerrilla. He put up resistance and attempted to escape when officers came to arrest him.
The federals spotted and destroyed 12 guerrilla caches on Tuesday. A cache in the Kurchaloi village contained 17 artillery shells and 13 mortar mines. A cache in the village of Roshni-Chi in the south-western Chechen Urus-Martan district contained two powerful landmines weighing a total of over 30kg. A cache on the outskirts of the Kokadoi village, Itum-Kale district, housed five assault rifles, a machine-gun, 15 grenades and a large number of cartridges.