Rebel ambush leaves 37 Russians dead in Chechnya

Russian soldiers attack a ruined house in Grozny where a Chechen sniper was seen on Wednesday

March 3, 2000
Web posted at: 1:23 PM EST (1823 GMT)

In this story: A 4-hour battle U.N. workers enter Grozny Russia to invite Red Cross chief Battle in the mountains continues RELATED STORIES, SITES

From wire reports

MOSCOW -- A top Russian commander said Friday that nearly 37 troops from an elite police unit died in a guerrilla attack Thursday in the Chechen capital Grozny, a city that the Russian military had claimed was completely under its control.

Initial reports said 20 Russians were killed, but the ITAR-Tass news agency on Friday quoted Sergei Kurcherok, chief of staff for the military in the North Caucasus, as saying the death toll had risen to 37.

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The Battle for Chechnya

The attack was the largest rebel assault launched in Grozny since the Russian military entered the city in early February, and verifies rebel claims that they would continue strikes against the advancing Russian forces.

The Russian military this week claimed victory in the campaign in Chechnya, saying rebel forces were in disarray and would be eliminated in a matter of weeks.

The attack cames as Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov met with U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and European Union foreign ministers in Lisbon, Portugal. Western nations have voiced their concern over Russia's conduct of the Chechen campaign and at reported human rights violations by Russian troops.

In Thursday's attack, the rebels ambushed a column of riot police traveling in nine trucks to a guard post in the Staropromyslovsky district of the Chechen capital. One eyewitness said the first and last trucks of the column were hit by incendiary rockets and a four-hour battle between Russian forces and rebels using machine guns and grenades ensued.

The attack has echoes of the tactics the rebels used successfully in the 1994-1996 war, which eventually forced Russian troops out of the breakaway province after they had sustained disastrous losses.

"This is the beginning of a guerrilla war," said Baultdin Bakuyev, a Chechen field commander who said his fighters had ambushed the police in Grozny, then managed to escape into the mountains.

U.N. workers who entered the Staropromyslovsky district with the first convoy of international aid to the Chechen capital discovered "a devastated and still insecure wasteland" littered with grenades and bodies, the U.N. refugee agency said from Geneva today.

U.N. monitors who traveled with the convoy confirmed there was still fighting in certain areas of the city.

Far more aid is needed for the 21,000 civilians still in Grozny, said Ron Redmond, spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. He added that the 45 tons of food brought to the city so far was "a drop in the bucket."

No date has been set for another convoy. UNHCR says it must assess the trial run first.

A Russian officer checks wounded soldiers with a metal detector before loading them onto a cargo plane on Thursday

In the Lisbon talks with Albright and his counterparts from Portugal and France, Ivanov agreed to invite the head of the International Committee for the Red Cross, Jakob Kellenberger, to visit Chechnya next week.

The West has accused Russia of excessive force in Chechnya and stressed the need for an independent investigation of reported rights abuses.

In Moscow, Russia's rights commissioner on Chechnya said he agreed to Council of Europe Rights Commissioner Alvaro Gil-Robles' request to let two European envoys join him in the region to probe allegations.

He said the two envoys would not be able to talk to the media and that their report would have to pass through him before being sent to Gil-Robles. A U.N. envoy was also due to arrive in Moscow on Sunday to discuss the provision of humanitarian aid.

Meanwhile, Russian troops continued to battle rebels in Chechnya's southern mountains. Russian warplanes and helicopters flew more than 90 combat missions over the past 24 hours in the Argun Gorge region, where the rebels retreated this week after leaving their last major stronghold, the town of Shatoi.

A large contingent of federal troops was concentrated near Duba-Yurt, at the northern end of the Argun Gorge.

Heavy artillery bombarded suspected rebel positions in five Argun Gorge villages, as well as around Kharsinoi, west of the gorge, and Ulus-Kert, to the east.

About 1,000 militants were concentrated near Ulus-Kert, the military said. Rebel commanders claimed that about 2,500 of their fighters had escaped east from the Argun Gorge into the Vedeno Gorge early Friday.

Russia sent ground forces into Chechnya in late September after Chechnya-based Muslim fighters invaded the neighboring republic of Dagestan. Russian authorities also blamed the rebels for a series of apartment bombings in Russia that killed about 300 people. The rebels deny involvement in the bomb attacks.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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