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Chechen rebels attack Grozny city hall

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December 18, 2000 

NAZRAN-- (UNB/AP) - Rebels opened fire on the mayor's office in Chechnya's capital Grozny on Sunday, prompting a shootout with police and guards that left four dead and several bystanders wounded, officials said.

It was one of the most daring of several recent attacks by rebel Chechens on Russia-backed Chechen officials. The raids highlight the difficulty Russia is having restoring order to the breakaway republic and how weak the Russians' hold is on areas they claim to control, such as Grozny.

A large group of rebels who had apparently been hiding nearby rushed at Grozny's city hall at midday, exchanging fire with building guards and Chechen police. The ITAR-Tass news agency, citing police, said two police officers and two militants were killed in the fighting, and several bystanders were wounded.

The hourlong shootout ended when a unit of Russian troops was called in from their nearby base. Ten people were detained on suspicion of involvement in the attack, ITAR-Tass said.

"Grozny is boiling with rebels," Grozny's Mayor Bislan Gantamirov said on Russia's RTR television Sunday night from Moscow. He was not in his office at the time of the attack.

Gantamirov claimed that there were more rebels in Grozny than Russian troops, even though federal forces say they have been in charge of the bomb-shattered city since February.

Despite months of Russian promises that the current war is near an end, the rebels have been inflicting daily casualties in raids on Russian checkpoints, convoys and Russian-backed Chechen administrative buildings.

Overnight Sunday, unidentified arsonists burned down Grozny's main civil registry archives, ITAR-Tass said. The building held birth, death, marriage and other registry documents since 1944 for the Chechen capital.

Gantamirov's supporters have clashed not only with rebels but also with Russia-backed Chechen leaders. Gantamirov was convicted of embezzling funds for rebuilding Chechnya after the 1994-6 separatist war, but was pardoned and tapped to join the pro-Moscow administration after Russian troops re-entered Chechnya in 1999.

Violence and lawlessness engulfed Chechnya after rebels pushed the Russian military out at the end of the 1994-96 war. Federal forces returned in September 1999 after rebels raided the neighboring republic of Dagestan and after apartment bombings around Russia that killed 300 people. Moscow blamed Chechens for the blasts.