The President of Ingushetia, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov has been hit by the suicide bomber who is riding in a Toyota Camry, packed with explosives, veer off his car and set a colossal blast. It killed one assistant and the president was sent to the hospital with critical condition but already stable. People who saw the incident said the bomber evaded his car around the president’s police escort and barged into the convoy before setting off his bang. The persons wounded include the president’s younger brother.

Since coming to the office last October, Yevkurov, 45, had tried to fill down anger in the region, said Alexander Cherkasov, who has worked considerably in Ingushetia for the human rights group Memorial. The president extended forgiveness to militants, met with human rights groups and insisted upon the participation of local police in military operations.

“He tried to limit violence against the civilian population and to put back together the split between society and authorities, to show that the authorities in Ingushetia are not against the society,” Cherkasov said. “In this sense, he was much more dangerous for the underground fighters than his ancestor.”

The incident has been considered a terrorist attack by Russian president Dmitry Medvedev
According to him, “The president has done much recently to bring order and ensure peace in the republic. Bandits do not like these efforts.” Fresh backups would be sent to Caucasus according to the Russian security services.

Federal Security Service Director Alexander Bortnikov said during his meeting with Medvedev that: “Today’s incident was an attempt to destabilize the situation. The militants threatened Yevkurov many times. This is their response.”

Moscow has appeared ready to downplay violence in the disgracefully twitchy republics along its southern border, which lie close to Sochi, host city to the 2014 Winter Olympic Games. The government confirmed an official end to counter-terrorism operations in Chechnya two months ago, where Russia bled through two brutal wars in the last two decades.

However, the solid drop of violence in Ingushetia, where about half a million people live caught up in poverty, corruption and prejudice, remains to challenge Moscow’s control of the region. Today’s attempt on Yevkurov’s life was the latest in the increasing run of attacks on government officials in Ingushetia, which has edged out Chechnya as the epicenter of separatist Muslim militias in the Russian Caucasus.

Analysts say a Kremlin-backed crackdown on Chechnya itself has fueled an overflow of fighters into neighboring republics, especially Ingushetia. Ramzan Kadyrov, a onetime rebel fighter who rose to become a Kremlin-backed strongman president in Chechnya, taunted Yevkurov’s killers.

He told reporters in Chechnya that: “They have shown their true colors, and they want to start chaos in Ingushetia, to set free an endless armed conflict and to seed fear and ambiguity in the souls of civilians.”

Earlier this month, a judge and a former prime minister were gunned down in separate attacks. A senior Ingush investigator also lost his leg in a bombing attack in a separate attack today.

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