Khankala attack
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On August 19, 2002, a Russian-made Igla shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile hit an overloaded Mi-26 helicopter, causing it to crash in a minefield and burn down at the main military base at Khankala near the capital city of Grozny, Chechnya. A total of 127 Russian Army troops and crew from the Russian Air Force base at Mozdok were killed in the crash, the greatest loss of life in the history of helicopter aviation and one of the worst disasters in Russian military history.
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[edit] Reprisals at Khankala
The Russian military quickly responded to the loss of the Mi-26 (as well as two other helicopters that were shot down at approximately the same time) by destroying an entire residential area near Khankala in the outskirts of Grozny since it was believed that the SAMs that destroyed the helicopters were fired from one of the many dilapidated apartment blocks that dotted the area. Some military officials said the Chechens who were left homeless as a result of the attack were themselves partly to blame because they had failed to report that militants were hiding in their houses, preparing attacks.
Russian government spokesmen, Ilya Shabalkin, reported that the action was carried out with the goal of preventing Rebels from using the area to lay ambushes and build weapon emplacements close to the Khankala military base. It was also announced that five Chechens suspected of "terrorist ties" were killed.
[edit] Trials
The helicopter was designed to carry about 80 troops, while the one that was destroyed was actually carrying around 150; the commander in charge of the helicopter, Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Kudyakov, was convicted of negligence and violating flight regulations.
A Chechen who reportedly helped to shoot down the helicopter, a 27-year-old Grozny resident named Doku Dzhantemirov, was found guilty of "planning and carrying out an act of terror" and was sentenced to life imprisonment in April 2004; at his trial, Dzhantemirov maintained that he was not a terrorist, instead describing himself as "a soldier of the state of the Ichkeria."
