Rights group says Russians kill civilians in Ingushetia

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A leading human rights group accused Russian forces on Wednesday of killing innocent civilians as they try to snuff out rebel activity in Ingushetia.

New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Russia's heavy-handed counter-insurgent tactics were alienating the population and risked destabilising the whole north Caucasus.

"The crimes in Ingushetia, although on a far smaller scale, evoke the thousands of enforced disappearances, killings and torture cases that plagued Chechnya for more than a decade," said Tanya Lokshina, main author of the HRW's 120-page report.

HRW said Russian forces killed civilians in anti-rebel raids and beat up young men in police custody in 2007 and 2008.

Ingushetia is one of the smallest republics in Russia and has a population of about 300,000. It neighbours Chechnya, where rebels fought Russian soldiers in two wars since 1994 in which both sides committed human rights abuses.

A Kremlin-backed Chechen leader has dampened fighting in Chechnya in recent years, but the intensity of rebel attacks increased last year in its neighbours Dagestan and Ingushetia.

"Far from ending the insurgency, 'dirty war' tactics are likely to further destabilise the situation in Ingushetia and beyond," Lokshina said in a statement.

Russian officials were not immediately available for comment.

Assassins have murdered prominent Ingush police chiefs and judges, bombs explode at the side of roads and military helicopters monitor the population from the sky.