The leader of a Russian region that has been hit by a surge in violence and abductions Thursday blamed unnamed forces in Moscow and abroad who want to foster instability in the volatile North Caucasus, according to AP. Ingush President Murat Zyazikov said some opposition groups in Caucasus were also behind the violence in his region in recent months. «Some politicians want to maintain the southern region as a zone of instability,» Zyazikov told reporters in Moscow. «They want to turn Ingushetia into a testing ground for some experiment.» Zyazikov spoke a day after some 500 people rallied in Ingushetia's main city to protest a sharp increase in abductions and called for Zyazikov's resignation. After a tense standoff, protesters threw rocks and chanted anti-police slogans and police fired over the protesters' heads in response. The crowd dispersed late Wednesday, and no injuries were reported. Zyazikov, who is widely unpopular in Ingushetia, said «rallies never bring any good» and he vowed to stay and ensure order and control over the region. Russian media has speculated in recent months that the Kremlin may be preparing to sack Zyazikov or force him out of office. Government critics attribute the growing number of attacks in the region to anger fueled by abductions, beatings, unlawful arrests and killings of suspects by government forces and local allied paramilitaries. The poor, mostly Muslim republic of fewer than 500,000 people shares the language and culture of neighboring Chechnya and its population _ which includes a large number of refugees from Chechnya's fighting _ is seen as sympathetic to separatists. Federal officials earlier this year tripled the number of law enforcement troops in Ingushetia in an effort to stem the violence. Meanwhile on Thursday, gunmen fired on a car carrying four federal servicemen in Nazran, killing two and wounding the other two, according to an Associated Press reporter who witnessed the shooting. A day before, gunmen killed a police officer and wounded four federal servicemen in two separate attacks in Ingushetia, police said. Wednesday's protest was sparked by the abduction a day earlier of two Ingush men by masked gunmen in Chechnya's capital, Grozny, according to Chechen officials and one of the abducted men. Chechnya was the site of two wars since 1994 pitting government forces against separatist rebels with a militant Islamic ideology. The two, who were released overnight, said during the capture that they were thrown into a hole with rats and pressured to admit to terrorist activity. One of the man, Magomed Aushev, told AP that he did not know who the abductors were. He also said it was the second time in two months that he had been abducted by masked gunmen who demanded that he admit to being a terrorist and provide names of other alleged militants. Also Thursday, in the region of Dagestan which borders Chechnya to the east, police fought a gunbattle with two militants holed up in an apartment in the regional capital Makhachkala, a law enforcement official said.
