mother. Journalists in Grozny and Moscow believe that her murder was related to stories she had published on crime in Chechnya. 10 January 1995 – Jochen Piest, a correspondent with Stern magazine (Germany), was killed in an attack by a Chechen rebel against a Russian mine-clearing unit in Chervlyonna, a village 24 kilometers northeast of Grozny. Rossiskaya Gazeta correspondent Vladimir Sorokin was wounded in the attack; Piest was fatally hit by three bullets. 22 May 1995 – Farkhad Kerimov. Farkhad Kerimov was murdered while filming for the Associated Press behind rebel lines in Chechnya. No motive has ever been established for the killing. Natalya Alyakina, a free-lance correspondent for German news outlets, was shot dead in June by a soldier after clearing a Russian checkpoint near Budyonnovsk. Shamkhan Kagirov, a reporter for the Moscow daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta and the local Vozrozhenie newspaper, was shot and killed in an ambush in Chechnya. Kagirov and three local police officers were traveling in a car near Grozny when they were attacked. The three officers were also killed. 11 March 1996 –Viktor Pimenov, a cameraman with the local Vainakh TV company was fatally shot in the back by a sniper positioned on the roof of a 16-story building in Grozny. Pimenov had been filming the devastation caused to the Chechen capital by 6–9 March rebel raid on the city. Pimenov was posthumously awarded the Rory Peck Award. 20 March 1996 – Nadezhda Chaikova, correspondent for the Obshchaya gazeta (Moscow) weekly newspaper disappeared while on assignment. Her body was found buried in the Chechen village of Gekhi on 11 April, blindfolded and showing signs of abuse. The cause of death was a gunshot wound to the back of the head. The identity of her executioners remains disputed. According to documents from Dudaev's archive that came into the hands of Russian special services in 2002, she was killed by people from the so-called "Department of state security of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria" (). At the time there were strong suspicions that Russian security services were involved. September 1996 to October 1999 No journalists are recorded as having been killed between September 1996 and October 1999 but 22 were kidnapped during these three years and later released. 2nd Chechen war, 1999 onwards A counter-terrorist operation by the federal authorities began in the region in September 1999. It was declared over on 16 April 2009. 27–29 October