Three people have been killed after a car carrying at least one Interior Ministry employee was shot at in Nazran, Ingushetia’s largest city and former capital.

On Friday evening, an unknown number of assailants in one vehicle opened fire on another vehicle near the federal highway in Nazran. According to the Ingush Investigative Committee, one of those killed was a police officer.

The Committee stated that they had opened a criminal case and were searching for the attackers. 

According to Telegram channel Baza, the three men killed — Ilez Aushev, Beslan Aushev, and Amir Aushev — were all employees of Ingushetia’s Centre for Combating Extremism. Russian news agency Regnum stated that Ilez Aushev was a Patrol and Post Service officer, while the other two men were his relatives.

Baza stated that the deputy head of the Center for Combating Extremism in Ingushetia, Adam Khamkhoev, was also in the car that was shot at. He was not injured. 

Citing a source from Ingush law enforcement, Russian state news agency TASS reported that Khamkhoev was the main target of the attack.

According to Baza, this attack was already the fifth attempt on Khamkhoev’s life, noting that he had been wounded in the last two attempts. 

[Read more: Inside Ingushetia’s anti-extremism centre: torture, extortion, murder]

TASS reported that forensic experts found around 100 bullet casings in and around the car.

Footage of the attack shared on Telegram showed a car parked on the territory adjacent to the highway. Driving away, it moves past a parked SUV, disappearing from the camera’s field of view, before a man appears near the SUV, shooting several times.

According to TASS, the car carrying the attackers was later found burned in North Ossetia.

The head of Ingushetia, Makhmud-Ali Kalimatov, called the attack an ‘inhumane act’ directed against both the law enforcement system and stability in the region.

Interfax reported on 12 October that the attackers ‘may be connected to the influential Batalkhadzhintsy sect, whose members were arrested in connection with the murder of the head of the Ingush Centre for Combating Extremism, Ibragim Eldzharkiev, and his brother in Moscow’.

Ibragim and Akhmed Eldzherkiyev were shot dead on 2 November 2019 in Moscow in an apparent assassination.

The Batalkhadzhintsy are an Ingushetian Muslim group mostly residing in the village of Surkhakhi. They are infamous for their close ties to the leadership of neighbouring Chechnya.

The shootout was the second armed incident to recently occur in Ingushetia.

On 30 September, security forces conducted an operation to detain eight residents of Ingushetia who, according to the Russian FSB, were preparing a series of sabotage acts at energy facilities and attacks on security forces. Seven suspects were detained in Magas and Nazran, while the eighth suspect resisted arrest and was killed, the FSB reported.