“We didn’t expect this to happen, the devils showed their last strength.”<br /><br /> So said Chechnya’s Kremlin-backed leader Ramzan Kadyrov after heavily-armed rebels stormed its capital Grozny.<br /><br /> In the fierce gunbattles that followed, at least 20 people were killed.<br /><br /> The rebels attacked a police checkpoint before moving to a school and a building housing the media where they battled members of the security forces.<br /><br /> Ten policemen were killed and nearly 30 injured according to Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee which said 10 suspected militants also died in the fighting.<br /><br /> Footage obtained by Reuters showed clashes at night and in the morning that included persistent small arms fire and what looked like a shoulder-fired missile striking the media building.<br /><br /> Workers there said one civilian had suffocated to death as fire engulfed the building, though authorities did not confirm the report.<br /><br /> An Islamist group has claimed responsibility, saying it was revenge for “the oppression of Muslim women”.<br /><br /> The bloodiest fighting in Chechnya for months erupted just hours before President Vladimir Putin ‘s big state of the nation speech in Moscow.<br /><br /> It underlines the fragile security situation in the turbulent southern Russian region more than a decade after Putin sent troops in to quell an Islamist separatist uprising.
