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Rebels, Russian troops clash in southern Chechnya |
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September 21, 2000
NAZRAN, Russia (AP) - The Russian military sent reinforcements to pursue rebels in the southern mountains of Chechnya after a clash that killed one Russian soldier and wounded eight others, officials said Wednesday. The fighting broke out Tuesday near the town of Zhani-Vedeno, in the Vedeno region southeast of the capital Grozny, when rebels attacked a military convoy, said a Russian government spokesman in the northern Chechen town of Gudermes. Russian positions in the region were attacked 13 times since Tuesday and additional troops have been dispatched there as ambushes have become more frequent, the spokesman said. Russian helicopter gunships bombed the district on Wednesday morning, he said. Rebels also attacked a Russian checkpoint in the southern Itum-Kale district, near the border with Georgia. The attack was repelled, the military said without giving details of casualties. Despite Russia's repeated assurances that rebels are on the verge of defeat, the government's spokesman on Chechnya, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, conceded Wednesday that the situation remains tense, with continual attacks against federal troops and pro-Russian officials in Chechnya, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported. But the head of Chechnya's pro-Russian administration, Akhmad Kadyrov, asserted that the war was nearly over and Russia could begin withdrawing its forces. "A situation has formed in Chechnya that allows a gradual return of troops to the barracks," Kadyrov was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency. Kadyrov also proposed that Chechnya be patrolled by joint units of Russian army soldiers and Chechen police, to end the alleged, widespread bribe-taking and abuse by the Russians. "Random victims and cruelty cannot make an ally out of the people," Kadyrov said. In addition to nightly attacks on federal positions, the militants have been laying mines along roads and railways in the breakaway republic. The military said that four Chechens had blown themselves up on Wednesday as they attempted to plant a mine near a highway in the Kurchaloi district of eastern Chechnya, near the border of Dagestan. In Moscow, the Federal Security Service said it had successfully staged a sting operation on Monday and Tuesday to disband a group of Chechens who were allegedly financing the rebels. Five Chechens were detained in the operation. A spokesman for the service said that the five-member group had manufactured pirated compact discs and other counterfeit goods, bought and sold firearms and explosives, and engaged in other criminal activities in Moscow. He said that the group earned an estimated dlrs 500,000 to dlrs 600,000 a month, and that a large part of the money was transferred to the North Caucasus to support rebel activities. Russian forces rolled into Chechnya last September, after rebel raids on a neighboring region and four bomb blasts across Russia that killed some 300 people. Russia blamed the blasts on Chechen rebels, though no one has been convicted. |