At least 75 militants, including 3 gang leaders, have been eliminated in the North Caucasus republic of Chechnya since the beginning of the year, Chechen Interior Minister Muslim Isayev said on Thursday.
Over 160 militants have been rounded up, Isayev told an Interior Ministry meeting in the Chechen capital Grozny.
The Kremlin has claimed to have brought stability to Chechnya, which saw two brutal separatist wars in the 1990s and early 2000s, but an audacious militant attack on the Chechen parliament in Grozny on Tuesday prompted fears that the Islamist underground had been rejuvenated.
In August, a suicide squad wreaked havoc in Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov's home village of Tsentoroi.
The once war-torn republic has seen relative calm in recent years under Kadyrov, a former militant turned Kremlin ally whom critics have accused of cultivating a personality cult and involvement in human rights abuses.
GROZNY, October 21 (RIA Novosti)
