November 12, 1999
Web posted at: 12:07 a.m. EST (0507 GMT)

In this story: Gudermes would be significant victory Russians pound capital with rockets and shells Canada calls fro Security Council action Second journalist killed RELATED STORIES, SITES

GROZNY, Russia -- Russian soldiers prepared to occupy Gudermes, Chechnya's second-largest city, a day after troops hammered the capital of the breakaway republic, Grozny. Col. Gen. Valery Manilov said soldiers would start to occupy the city on Friday.

Gudermes would be significant victory

Seizing Gudermes, 33.6 kilometers (21 miles) east of Grozny, would be a significant victory for the Russians. Securing Gudermes would give Russia control over its first major population center in the province since its troops withdrew in defeat after the 1994-96 war.

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Russia says residents in the town have promised to offer no resistance.

Russians pound capital with rockets and shells

Outside Grozny on Thursday, Russian troops stationed on the Terek Ridge, which looms above the northern outskirts, lashed the city with rockets and shells.

Some troops moved off the ridge late in the day and appeared headed toward the airport on Grozny's northwest outskirts.

Advance Russian units reached the town of Argun, also east of Grozny, on Thursday. Chechen commanders said their forces were being forced back in several areas.

Russia also shelled the rebel stronghold of Bamut in Chechnya's southwest, and Manilov said the campaign to take that key city was likely to continue for many days.

In addition, Russian guns and warplanes struck a half-dozen other areas, Russian news agencies reported.

Manilov said some 280 Russian troops had been killed and about 600 wounded since September, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported. Russia said last week that about 150 of its soldiers had been killed.

Russia says its Chechnya campaign, which began with airstrikes in early September, is aimed at liquidating Islamic rebels.

Russia began the attacks after Chechnya-based militants twice invaded the nearby republic of Dagestan this summer. The militants are also blamed for a series of apartment bombings that killed some 300 people in Russia in September.

Canada calls for Security Council action

Chechen fighters watch a Russian position near Bamut

Canada's ambassador to the United Nations urged the Security Council to take action in Chechnya to protect civilians endangered in the fighting.

Canadian Ambassador Robert Fowler said the council should undertake a broad discussion on the matter because it "could affect international peace and security."

Fowler said at least a half-dozen council ambassadors shared Canada's concerns about Chechnya.

The fighting has driven an estimated 200,000 people out of Chechnya to neighboring regions, where they often face wretched conditions in cold and poorly supplied refugee encampments.

A delegation of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe visited some of the camps on Wednesday. The head of the OSCE, Norwegian Foreign Minister Knut Vollebaek, is expected to discuss the crisis Friday in Helsinki, Finland, with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov.

Vollebaek told Reuters on Thursday he would try to persuade Ivanov to allow an OSCE presence in the conflict zone, where it played a key role in negotiating an end to a 1994-96 war as the only organization with Moscow's blessing to act as a mediator.

"We will try to address the possible presence of the OSCE in the region, because I do think this is a conflict we have to see as political," Vollebaek said.

Second journalist killed

Meanwhile, a cameraman for a Russian TV station has died as a result of a Russian attack on a column of cars heading out of the war zone on October 29.

According to the station, TV Tsentr, the cameraman, Ramzan Mezhidov, was leaving Grozny in a civilian vehicle when he jumped out of his car to videotape a Russian jet conducting a bombing run.

Andrey Pavlov, head of regional coverage at TV Tsentr, who quoted witnesses, said the jet returned and fired its machine guns at Mezhidov.

Pavlov speculated that perhaps the pilot thought Mezhidov was holding an anti-aircraft missile. But he said the military has not explained the incident to the TV station.

The camera that Mezhidov was using was not hit, and the station is expecting to receive his last tape soon, Pavlov said.

Mezhidov is the second journalist to die in recent fighting.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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