Fighting persisted in Chechnya on Tuesday, with six Russian servicemen killed and 11 others wounded in the war-ravaged region, an official said.

Three were killed and seven wounded in rebel attacks on Russian positions, while two died in a clash with rebels near the village of Dyshne-Vedeno, in southern Chechnya, the official in the Moscow-backed regional administration said on condition of anonymity.

The sixth serviceman was killed, along with a Chechen police officer, when a military vehicle hit a land mine near the southern town of Shali, the official said. Four other servicemen were wounded in the explosion.

Russian forces withdrew from Chechnya in 1996 after a devastating 20-month war, leaving separatists in control. Russian troops returned in September 1999 after Chechnya-based insurgents mounted incursions into neighboring Dagestan and after some 300 people died in apartment-building bombings that authorities blamed on the rebels.

Daily fighting continues nearly four years later, and Russian authorities have blamed Chechen attackers for most of a series of bombing attacks that have killed more than 150 people in and around Chechnya and in Moscow since May.

Also Tuesday, Justice Minister Yuri Chaika said he has sent a letter to the British Home Office stating that Chechen separatist Akhmed Zakayev will be treated humanely if he is extradited to Russia, Interfax and the ITAR-Tass news agencies reported.

"The pronouncements by Zakayev's lawyers that he is likely to be tortured are absurd," ITAR-Tass quoted Chaika as saying.

Zakayev, an envoy of Aslan Maskhadov, who was elected president of Chechnya between the wars in 1997 but is now denounced by Russia as a terrorist, faces 13 charges, including kidnapping and murder, if extradited from Britain.

Defense lawyers in Zakayev's extradition case in a London court have said he would not get a fair trial and could be tortured if he is returned to Russia.

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