[2] According to the rebel website Kavkaz Center, three detachments totaling up to 60 militants (and featuring ten suicide bombers)[6] led by Emirs Zaurbek, Makhran, and Abdurakhman - commanders directly subordinate to Aslambek Vadalov[2] - entered the village around 4:30 a.m. local time.

[2] During the fighting the militants managed to send an SMS message to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s North Caucasus service at 6:30 a.m. saying, “Tsentoroy is burning,”[4] and television footage the following day showed a burnt-out car just 150 meters from the entrance to Kadyrov’s fortress-like residence, exhibiting just how deeply the brazen attack had penetrated the village.

[2] Kadyrov also tightened his control over information coming from Tsentoroy by not allowing any of the village's 5,000 inhabitants to leave in the days after the attack; the citizenry were also allegedly under the threat of death not to talk about the siege or the damage inflicted by the rebels.

[4] Also in early August, Kadyrov made the outlandish claim that there were a "maximum [of] seventy" Islamist militants remaining in Chechnya; not only did the operation clearly refute that, but it also showed that the rebels still had strategists experienced enough to plan and coordinate a three-pronged attack as well as the types of mid-level commanders capable of carrying it out with minimal casualties.

[3] Following Kadyrov's 1 August statement, Ingush Security Council Secretary Akhmed Kotiyev revised Yevkurov's account, claiming that the men killed were indeed the Avdorkhanov brothers and Khaladov, and that they had been identified through documents they were carrying.