RUSSIA Troops search for rebels behind series of attacks

Rebels seized the Interior Ministry in Nazran.
CHERMEN, Russia (AP) -- Thousands of troops streamed into a southern Russian city today in pursuit of suspected Chechen rebels who set fire to police and government buildings and killed 48 people, three of them high-ranking regional officials, in a series of brazen overnight attacks.
The militants' foray into the province of Ingushetia underscored the Russian military's failure to defeat separatists in neighboring Chechnya after five years of fighting, and raised new fears that violence could spread to other parts of southern Russia.
What happened
Shortly before midnight Monday, about 100 fighters armed with grenades and rocket launchers seized the regional Interior Ministry in Nazran, the largest city in Ingushetia, and attacked border guard posts there and in two villages near the border with Chechnya, Karabulak and Yandare, regional emergency officials said.
Russian authorities sent in reinforcements shortly after dawn today. The anti-terrorism troops and soldiers moved into Nazran through the border village of Chermen in neighboring North Ossetia, in a long column of armored personnel carriers and army trucks.
By midmorning, most of the militants had already fled into the thick forests on the border of Ingushetia and Chechnya, authorities said.