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"FOCUS News Agency"
July, 29th 2008
An assassination attempt against Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov was foiled by his bodyguards last week, Russia's online news agency Regnum said in a report denied by his spokesman on Tuesday, AFP reports.
An attacker tried to shoot Kadyrov with a pistol at a public event in the town of Gudermes in Chechnya on the eve of his meeting with President Dmitry Medvedev, Regnum said late Monday, citing a local security officer.
Speaking on Echo of Moscow radio station on Tuesday, Kadyrov spokesman Lyoma Gudayev denied the report and said the Chechen president was in fact in the city of Yaroslavl on the eve of his talks with Medvedev in the Kremlin.
The unidentified security officer was quoted by Regnum as saying: "The ability of the president's bodyguards and their equipment worked.... A tragedy was averted at the last moment. The attacker injured a bodyguard in the head."
Regnum said security forces across Chechnya had now been put on high alert.
Medvedev and Kadyrov met on Friday to discuss reconstruction efforts in Chechnya and preparations for elections to the local parliament in the war-ravaged province, which are due to be held in October.
Kadyrov's father, Akhmad Kadyrov, then also the president of Chechnya, was killed by a bomb blast during a military parade in a stadium in Grozny in May 2004 in a brazen attack that killed more than 30 people.
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