Gunmen killed two policemen in the centre of the capital of Chechnya on Monday in a blatant daylight attack, jerking Grozny out of the relative peace of the last few months. Officials declined to comment on the incident. Passers-by recognised the two dead men as policemen. Witnesses said the attackers sprayed the two men with machine-gun fire."We were standing on the street and saw how two people came out of a building on Victory Avenue. People in a car opened fire on them," said Zaira, who works at a beauty salon nearby. "They fired back and wounded one of the attackers. One woman was injured, and taken off to hospital."
The two bodies lay on their backs on the central Victory Avenue, one of them with obvious bullet holes in his leg and chest, before being gathered up and loaded into a car. A Stechkin pistol -- a type only issued to special forces -- lay on the ground between them.