Funeral and protest rally in Argun Ruslan Isayev, North Caucasus – The funeral of twelve local inhabitants, mainly young people, took place in the third largest Chechen town, Argun. The buried were killed by Russian artillery shelling that took place during the night between November 8 and 9.
Argun was under continuous mortar and artillery fire from 11 p.m till 7 a.m. of the following day. Dozens of houses located in the streets of Mira, Zavodskaya, Lugovaya, Pushkina, Karla Marxa, Tsepnaya, Zheleznodorozhnaya, Shosseynaya and others have been completely or partly destroyed.
The survivors of the artillery and mortar shelling told Prague Watchdog that the young victims perished when trying to rescue the wounded who cried for help.
In the morning of November 9, a member of an organization called “Women of Chechnya against the War” managed to film the scene of shelling immediately after the end of the attack on Argun. The video material does not show a single person wearing a camouflage although the Russian military command claims to have killed nine Chechen fighters.
After the "mopping up" operations that followed, several corpses were found in various parts of the town bearing numerous signs of wounds. Brothers Saibek and Salambek Musurov were killed at the entrance to their house. Their bodies were disfigured by soldiers carrying out the so-called “mopping up” operation. The other known victims of the attacks are Ismail Yusupov, Ilya Masudov and Abdul Aliev.
Among the killed are also women – Ravzan Temieva, 35 year old mother of five, the oldest aged 14, Zara Vichieva, medical nurse killed in a backyard of an already destroyed house when she attempted to attend to an injured person, and Aysat Khantueva. Despite the Muslim tradition of burying the dead on the same day, the locals decided to postpone the funeral by 24 hours.
Numerous crowds gathered in the center of Argun today to protest against the killing of the innocent people. The participants in the meeting asked all people of good will, in particular the Russian public, to pressure the Russian leadership to stop the war in Chechnya and repressions against civilians.
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