Justice official gunned down in Russia’s Caucasus

A Russian justice official was gunned down while driving in the volatile Russian Caucasus Sunday, prosecutors said, in the latest attack in the region hit by an Islamist insurgency.

Albert Altuyev, 39, died on the scene of the attack in Nalchik, capital of the Kabardino-Balkaria republic in the unstable North Caucasus, prosecutors said in Russian media reports.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev offered a bleak assessment of the situation in the Caucasus on November 19, saying there was little improvement in security.

He said the situation in the Northern Caucasus, which has been beset by Islamic militancy over the last years, remained “very difficult”.

After a second war in Chechnya in 1999 between Russian forces and separatist fighters, the rebels’ inspiration moved towards Islam with the aim of imposing an Islamic state in the region.

Although the war ended in 2000, rebels have waged an increasingly deadly insurgency with unrest spreading into other areas of the North Caucasus such as Dagestan and Ingushetia.