Police detain main s.Russia opposition leaders

NAZRAN, Russia (Reuters) - Police have detained two of the main organisers of an anti-government protest in the southern Russian region of Ingushetia, local interior ministry sources said on Friday.

Mainly Mulsim Ingushetia borders Chechnya, the centre of two wars between rebels and Russian soldiers since 1994. Unrest has soared in Ingushetia over the last 12 months and barely a day passes without a bomb attack, kidnapping or murder.

Police detained Maksharip Aushev and Magomed Evloev on Thursday and drove them to a detention centre in Nalchik in the neighbouring republic of Kabardino-Balkaria, said the source who declined to be identified.

Evloev founded the ingushetiya.ru Web site, the main source of opposition news from the republic. He told Reuters in January that the authorities had tried to hack into and close the site.

On Jan. 26 around 30 protesters defied a ban to march through Ingushetia's main town, Nazran, to complain about the worsening security conditions. They threw petrol bombs at police and torched the office of a pro-government newspaper.

Evloev had also organised a petition against a Dec. 2 parliamentary election which official results said around 99 percent of voters had participated in and that nearly all of them had chosen Russian President Vladimir Putin's party.

About 90,000 people had signed the petition out of a population of about 450,000.