AT LEAST 100 Chechen rebels attacked security posts in the southern Russian city of Nalchik yesterday in an audacious daylight operation that left dozens dead and challenged the Kremlin’s claims to control the North Caucasus.

The heavily armed militants launched simultaneous attacks about 9am on eight targets — including police stations, security service offices and the airport — in the capital of the Kabardino-Balkaria republic.

Residents ran for their homes as the city, which is near the border with Chechnya, was engulfed in a fierce street battle between the rebels and Russian security forces for the rest of the day.

“The windows shook, cars were burning and there was shooting everywhere,” said Bela Kardanova, 48, a musician who spoke to The Times from her flat opposite one of the targeted police stations. “I heard someone cry, ‘Allahu Akhbar!’ (God is greatest)”

President Putin ordered a blockade of the city of 280,000 people, to prevent militants from slipping out. He ordered security forces to shoot dead any gunmen who offered resistance.

After a meeting with Mr Putin, Aleksandr Chekalin, the Russian Deputy Interior Minister, said: “Anyone who puts up resistance with weapons in his hands must be liquidated.”

By nightfall, local officials said that 61 rebels had been killed and another 17 captured. They said that 12 police and 13 civilians had been killed and that 116 people were injured. But the death toll was expected to rise because corpses were still being collected.

The Russian NTV station showed footage of several bodies in the streets, lying in blood and covered with blankets. Mr Chekalin also said that five rebels were holding an unknown number of hostages in Nalchik’s third regional police department, while three more rebels were barricaded in a souvenir shop. “We are facing some serious night work,” he said. “The militants will try to break out at night . Our task is not to let a single militantthrough — and shoot to kill, if they are carrying weapons.”

Chechen rebels claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement on the Kavkaz- Centre website — a mouthpiece for Shamil Basayev, the Chechen warlord who was behind the Beslan school siege in September last year. “Forces of the Caucasus Front — a unit of the Chechen Republic’s Armed Forces — went into the town, including brigades from the Kabardino-Balkarian Yarmuk,” the statement said.

Yarmuk is a militant Islamic group based in Kabardino-Balkaria. It was targeted in a sweep by Russian security forces in January, a month after militants seized weapons from the local offices of the anti-drugs agency. Russian officials denied reports that Mr Basayev was directly involved in yesterday’s attack.

Vladimir Kolesnikov, the Deputy Prosecutor-General, said detained suspects claimed that it was carried out under orders from two wanted militants, one of them an active supporter of Mr Basayev.

Nevertheless, it was the most brazen operation by Chechen rebels since the Beslan siege, in which 331 people were killed, half of whom were children.

It was also their first large operation since Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev, a cleric, took over as leader after Russian forces killed Aslan Maskhadov, the Chechen President.

Mr Sadulayev has threatened to broaden the decade-long war against Russian forces in Chechnya to encompass the whole of the North Caucasus.

The Kremlin insists that it is steadily bringing peace and stability to the region, but yesterday’s attack followed a string of smaller ones on republics neighbouring Chechnya over the past year.

The Moscow-based Human Rights Association said in a statement: “The tragedy in Nalchik confirms that assertions by Putin and the ministers of force that Chechnya is on the road back to peace and that almost all the rebel fighters have been eliminated are lies.”

Akhmed Zakayev, a London-based Chechen rebel representative, hailed the Nalchik attack as “a legitimate military operation which took place in the framework of the Caucasus front”. But Dmitri Kozak, Mr Putin’s representative in southern Russia, said that it was a criminal act, especially because it took place during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Local officials said that yesterday’s fighting began after police started an operation to capture about ten militants in a suburb of Nalchik. Children were evacuated from Nalchik’s School No 5, which is near a police station and the anti- terrorism centre, conjuring chilling memories of Beslan. Black smoke billowed from the building as panic-stricken parents searched for their children in the school yard.

At the airport, passengers on one charter flight had to wait inside their plane on the runway as Russian forces drove the rebels back. The rebels also raided a private weapons store.

A woman who gave only her first name, Marina, said that she was waiting for a bus near the weapons store when she saw three men in masks get out of an approaching tractor and start shooting. “We were terrified and just started running,” the 50-year-old woman said.

“I can’t believe this is happening. Everything seemed calm in our republic, but we also sensed that something was wrong, because so many people have come from Chechnya to live here.”

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