Russia’s Caucasus have seen decades of war, terror
MAKHACHKALA, Russia — Russia’s volatile North Caucasus, which the two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings once called home, have seen two decades of brutal fighting between Russian forces and separatists bent on carving out an independent Islamic state.
There was no information on any possible links between the suspects and any insurgent group. Tamerlan Tsarnaev — the 26-year-old killed in a gun battle with police in Massachusetts overnight — and his 19-year-old brother Dzhokhar are ethnic Chechens whose family left Chechnya long ago and moved to Central Asia, according to the Chechen government.
Before moving to the United States a decade ago, their uncle said, the brothers lived briefly in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan. Their father lives there now.