Russians suffer new losses

By Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW, JULY 1. Russian forces are suffering heavy losses in continuing fighting in Chechnya despite the military's claims of having subdued the breakaway region.

Eleven soldiers were killed and 18 wounded when an army convoy was ambushed at the entrance to a strategic mountain gorge in the southeast of Chechnya on Friday night, just hours after a senior Russian commander said his forces had destroyed a large rebel group in the area.

The Itar-Tass news agency quoted Russian military sources in Chechnya as reporting that the rebels had blown up a Russian armoured vehicle and fired at the military convoy with fire for two hours near the village of Avtury, 30 km southeast of the Chechen capital Grozny. A government spokesman in Moscow confirmed the attack, but said nine troops had been killed and 11 wounded. The incident took place shortly after Gen. Gennady Troshev, Russia's top commander in Chechnya, announced successful completion of a mop-up operation near Serzhen-Yurt, in the same area, claiming over 100 rebels had been killed. Moscow said only 11 Russian soldiers had died in the operation.

However, a Russian military source told the RBK news agency that 49 Russian troops had been killed in five days of fighting in the area. The figure did not include those killed in the Friday ambush.

A top rebel spokesman, Mr. Movladi Udugov, was reported as saying that the latest flareup came in response to Gen. Troshev's announcement last weekend that the Chechnya campaign was over.

Russian forces, which nominally control the whole of Chechnya, are daily attacked by well-trained rebels, at night on the plains and round the clock in tree-grown mountains.

``It's a cat-and-mouse game,'' an Interior Ministry officer told the NTV television on Friday. ``We comb forests but Chechens sneak through our lines, attacking us from behind.''

According to official figures, Russia has lost more than 2300 soldiers killed and over 6700 wounded in the nine-month old offensive in Chechnya. Unofficial estimates put the number of casualties at least at 4500.

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Section  : International
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