Crimean Tatars: Assassination Attempt against Leader Failed
Assailants threw an incendiary device into a building in Ukraine's Crimea province while the elected head of the Crimea's ethnic Tartar community was present.
Kiev- Assailants threw an incendiary device into a building adjoining a mosque in Mustafa Dzhemilev, the elected head of the
Neither was injured and security guards extinguished the device quickly. News reports described the object variously as a smoke grenade, a pipe bomb, and a Molotov cocktail.
Besides a mosque, Dzhemilev's office is adjacent to the Crimean Tartar Medzhlis, an semi-secular legislature with authority to make law for the region's Tartar community.
Police and agents from
Tension is high in the Crimean region between Tartars, almost all of whom consider themselves Sunni Muslims, and the province's ethnic Slavs, most of whom are Orthodox Christians.
A summer dispute between Tartars and Slavs over whether or not an open air market near
The last physical attack on the Tartar Medzhlis building took place in February 2005.
Ethnic Slavs including Russians and Ukrainians outnumber Tartars roughly two to one in
Soviet dictator Josef Stalin expelled Tartars from the