Bodies of nine men have been discovered in the Russian republic of Kabardino-Balkaria in the North-Caucasus.
The men were hunters from nearby towns. A search was launched when their cars were found abandoned. The corpses were found in a trench with their hands tied, and bullet wounds to the head. “They killed their dogs and took their hunting rifles. They took everything, including their mobile phones,” said Ruslan Bichelov, one of the victim’s brother. Police say the men may have inadvertently come across a militant hide-out in the forest after they went out to hunt on Saturday. The region's prosecutor's office says the killers could have been involved in an armed militant raid on Nalchik, the republics's capital, two years ago in which more than a hundred people were killed.