Increased Activity
Following the death of Astemirov in March 2010, the leadership was assumed by far more aggressive young commanders like the Baksan area-based Emir Abdullah (Asker Dzhappuyev) and the south-west sector commander Emir Zakaria (Ratmir Shameyev), who then apparently regrouped Yarmuk and changed its tactics. The group went on to perpetrate two high-profile bombings: a blast at the Nalchik hippodrome that injured two ministers during May Day festivities and a sabotage attack in the Baksan hydroelectric power station that inflicted significant economic damage in July. The group was also involved in a large number of near-daily attacks directed against members of security forces. According the Russian federal Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev in November 2010, "the highest level of the terrorist threat in the North Caucasus is in the republics of Dagestan and Kabardino-Balkaria", as the KBR saw six times more gun attacks and nearly five times more explosions in 2010 as in in the same period of 2009. The Yarmuk fighters began to simultaneously act as a Taliban-style morality police, targeting alleged "dens of vice".
Read more about this topic: Yarmuk Jamaat
Famous quotes containing the words increased and/or activity:
“The work of the miner has its unavoidable incidents of discomfort and danger, and these should not be increased by the neglect of the owners to provide every practicable safety appliance. Economies which involve a sacrifice of human life are intolerable.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)
“A worm is as good a traveler as a grasshopper or a cricket, and a much wiser settler. With all their activity these do not hop away from drought nor forward to summer. We do not avoid evil by fleeing before it, but by rising above or diving below its plane; as the worm escapes drought and frost by boring a few inches deeper.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)