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Nazran, Russia: Protesters angry with the leadership of the troubled Russian region of Ingushetia clashed with riot police yesterday, throwing rocks and firebombs the day after the government started a major security operation.
Police responded by firing live rounds over the heads of some of the 300 protesters who tried to gather in the central square of Ingushetia's main city, Nazran; heavily armed riot police blocked side streets.
No injuries were reported, but dozens of people were believed to have been detained, and with the North Caucasus region already tense, the situation threatened to spiral out of control.
Protesters - many of whom appeared to be young men - set fire to a nearby hotel and the building of a local newspaper that the opposition has criticised for praising authorities.
Some of the protesters threw rocks and incendiary devices at police, who fired shots into the air before moving into the crowd, beating people severely and hauling them into waiting police vans. An Associated Press reporter saw at least half a dozen people forcibly detained, including four journalists, and dozens more people were believed arrested.
Police did not give the exact number held.
Threat
"Everyone even indirectly involved in organising this protest will be severely punished," regional Interior Minister Musa Medov said.
Much of the violence in this poor, mostly Muslim republic of fewer than 500,000 people is seen as a spillover from neighbouring Chechnya, which shares a language and culture and where Russia has fought two wars against separatist rebels.
Ingushetia has many refugees from Chechnya's fighting and is seen as sympathetic to separatists.
Government critics attribute the growing number of attacks in the region - mostly against police - to anger fuelled by abductions, beatings, unlawful arrests and killings of suspects by government forces and local allied paramilitaries.
Many Ingush are also intensely unhappy with regional President Murad Zyazikov, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin and a former KGB agent.
"President [Zyazikov] has to face his people," Ingush lawmaker Bamatgirey Mankiyev said. "What is going on now only pits the people against authorities, especially against police."
Government forces on Friday began a security campaign in several districts of Ingushetia in response to a surge in violence and abductions. Regional law enforcement bodies together with federal interior and security forces increased identity checks and searches for militants and their arms caches in abandoned buildings and other places.
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