MOSCOW— A Norwegian reporter who was among a group of journalists and activists attacked by masked assailants near Chechnya said he escaped from the group’s minibus only seconds before it exploded into flames.
Oystein Windstad of the Ny Tid weekly told The Associated Press on Thursday that the men who ambushed the bus had dragged others off the vehicle, some by the hair, but that he resisted.
“I resisted going out of the bus because I thought: OK, if I’m out on this country road somewhere in the Caucasus, this is your death. You’re finished, this is your death,” Windstad said from a hospital in Ingushetia, just over the border from Chechnya.
When he saw the assailants weren’t looking at him for a moment, he jumped out through a window.
“I ran toward a dark field and I few seconds after I jumped out of the car, the whole bus exploded. It was completely in flames just five seconds after I jumped out,” he said.
Windstad and Maria Persson Lofgren of Sweden’s public radio were traveling with four Russian journalists and two activists of the Committee to Prevent Torture when the attack occurred Wednesday evening near the settlement of Ordzhonikidzevskaya. They were on a several-day media tour to investigate claims of widespread human rights abuses in Russia’s North Caucasus republics.
