North Caucasus: attack warnings in Urus-Martan district

On Thursday, according to UNHCR monitors, 1,722 persons, including 600 new arrivals, moved to Ingushetia from Chechnya. The majority of the new arrivals were women. Men made up about 20 percent. Almost all of them were from several villages in the Urus-Martan district south-east of Grozny. When asked why they left Chechnya, they said there were no battles in their villages but groups of Chechen fighters were appearing and warned that the fighting will start very soon in their villages. Some also reported the presence of helicopter gunships in the region. The number of IDPs returned to Chechnya from Ingushetia was 849 yesterday.

On Wednesday,1,831 people arrived in Ingushetia from Chechnya via the "Kavkaz-1" crossing point, including 500 new arrivals who had not previously made the journey. Newly arrived persons were from Urus-Martan, Katar-Yurt, and Zakan-Yurt , districts located south-east of Grozny. On the same day 1,000 IDPs returned to Chechnya from Ingushetia.

The 28th UNHCR convoy of relief items left Stavropol yesterday (Thursday) for Nazran. The 21-truck convoy carried a total of 302 MT of food (wheat flour, pearl barley, millet, peas, sugar, vegetable oil) plus 163 beds. Others providing trucks in the convoy were Action Against Hunger, the Danish Refugee Council, and the Salvation Army.

According to the Federal Migration Service, by 2 February about 52,500 internally displaced people from Chechnya had moved to various other regions of Russia, far from Chechnya. Some 100,000 IDPs had returned to Chechnya, according to EMERCOM.