In a dispatch from Moscow Wednesday morning Reuters reported citing the Russian-language "rebel Web site. that Russian Islamist insurgents said they shot down a military helicopter that crashed on Monday killing 11 people, including senior officers...The claim was made by a group calling itself the Ossetia Jamaat, which said it was allied to other Islamist insurgent groups in Russia's North Caucasus region, which includes Chechnya".
The Reuters dispatch on the Ossetian Mujahideen statement was sent from Moscow some 16 hours after the statement appeared on Chechen Web sites.
Well, there is no Mujahideen group calling itself "Ossetian Jamaat" in Caucasus. In Arabic, "Jamaat" just means "religious community". There are many Islamic religious communities in Ossetia, so the name would be improper for any specific Islamic group.
The real name of the North Ossetian Mujahdeen group which shot down the Russian helicopter is Kataib al-Khoul.
We remind our readers that one of the purposes of the Kavkaz Center English-language service is to provide reliable information to Western correspondents in Russia in order to avoid misunderstandings due to language problems.
KC