Blast in SernovodskRuslan Isayev, North Caucasus - Russian President Vladimir Putin's famous expression “to do away with terrorists in a lavatory“ seems to have inspired Chechen fighters who recently set up an explosive mechanism right in a public lavatory in Sernovodsk, located near the border with Ingushetia.
On Thursday at about 11 a.m. a blast thundered in the central street of Sernovodsk just while one of federal contract soldiers was inside. Luckily, the charge was not heavy and the soldier suffered only light contusion. Windows were broken in nearby houses, but no casualties have been reported.
In the evening, mostly male locals afraid of infamous "mopping-up" operations left Sernovodsk for refugee camps in Ingushetia where their relatives stay, according to a man named Sultan, 58, who set off with his large family. "I am against violence, be it done by anybody, and I don't want to put any of my children at risk; I have five of them," he said.
The explosion is not the first case of fighters' putting a bomb in an absolutely unexpected place. However, federal soldiers do not fall behind. One member of the Chechen police told me Russian soldiers whose service is to run out soon sometimes throw a grenade with a partly removed pin which is held only by a thin rag into a public lavatory. When the rag decays, the pin releases and the grenade explodes, giving the person at the place no chance to survive.
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