By Amie Ferris-Rotman and Katya Golubkova
MOSCOW/ATAZHUKINO, Russia (Reuters) - President Dmitry Medvedev threatened on Thursday to sack top security officials if they fail to prevent more attacks on strategic assets in Russia's North Caucasus after suspected Islamist rebels bombed a hydropower plant there.
Six masked men stormed the power plant in Kabardino-Balkaria on Wednesday, shot dead two guards and set off remote-controlled bombs beside the main generator units, investigators for the prosecutor's office said in a statement.
The attack ignited fears the Islamist insurgency along Russia's southern flank was expanding beyond the epicentre of violence, and analysts said the promise by rebels to shift their focus to economic targets was being fulfilled.
"There needs to be a fundamentally different system, designed and unified for all economic structures in the Caucasus," Medvedev told top energy official Igor Sechin at a meeting in Moscow shown on state television.
Officials "must do all they can to make sure that such things do not happen again. If they do, none of the law enforcement, security and energy company chiefs will keep their jobs. They will all be fired."
A year ago Islamist rebels vowed "economic war" on Russia's strategic assets such as pipelines and power stations as part of their plan to create a separate pan-Caucasus Islamic state.
The insurgency leader and Russia's most wanted man, Chechen rebel Doku Umarov, self-named "Emir of the Caucasus Emirate," claimed responsibility for twin suicide bombings in the Moscow metro that killed 40 people in March and the derailing of an express train in November that killed at least 26.
TWO YEARS NEEDED TO REBUILD PLANT
Sechin earlier on Thursday visited the burnt-out Baksanskaya plant in Atazhukino, about 40 km (25 miles) to the west of Kabardino-Balkaria's capital Nalchik, where police armed with Kalashnikov automatic rifles nervously guarded the entrance.
Although power supplies were not disrupted, Sechin said it would take almost two years to rebuild the plant, and it would cost 1.5 billion roubles (32 million pounds).
No one has taken responsibility for the bombing. But state-run media, citing unnamed law enforcement sources on Thursday, said authorities and police believed a local Islamist leader masterminded the attack.
Bewildered residents of Atazhukino, a town of 60,000 people, gazed at spirals of grey smoke still drifting into the sky out of the dilapidated plant, while the air was heavy with a toxic smell of burnt rubber and metal.
"They (rebels) receive money to do this, to scare us," said a 55-year-old local who did not wish to give his name.
The Kremlin is struggling to contain an Islamist insurgency in Chechnya, site of two separatist wars since the mid-1990s, Dagestan and Ingushetia, where youths fuelled by poverty and the ideology of global jihad stage near-daily attacks.
Violence in relatively peaceful Kabardino-Balkaria, west of this turbulent trio, has grown in recent months and analysts warn that the region's proximity to Sochi, due to host the 2014 Winter Olympics, could pose a new headache to the Kremlin.
A 15-year-old high school student, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said fellow classmates were shocked by the attack. "Absolutely everyone is horrified. I am so scared of what the terrorists could now do," he said as women in headscarves stacked watermelons for sale at the roadside.
(Writing by Amie Ferris-Rotman; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
