[8] The overnight attacks targeted 15 government buildings in the former Ingush capital and the largest city, Nazran, and three settlements located on the Baku-Rostov highway that crosses the republic from east to west (Karabulak, Sleptsovskaya and Yandare).

The attackers also tried but failed to free 50 prisoners from a temporary jail and dispersed at 3 a.m.,[10] before a column of federal army troops managed to reach Nazran just after dawn at 4 a.m.[11] One Russian military convoy was also ambushed en route from North Ossetia and suffered casualties.

The day before the attack, Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov, speaking for RFE/RL, claimed rebels are "going to switch to offensive warfare".

[12] A number of civilians, including the Ingush health minister and a local UN worker, were killed in the crossfire.

[citation needed] Army General Vyacheslav Tikhomirov, the Russian Deputy Interior Minister and the commander of Russia's Internal Troops (VV), decided to resign after Federal Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev blamed them for the high number of deaths.