Rebels attack police station in Chechnya
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-03-03 09:04

Rebels raided a police station in Chechnya, sparking a gunbattle that left one officer dead and 18 others wounded, officials said Wednesday. Five rebels were killed and seven were captured, they said.

In a separate attack, four federal soldiers were wounded overnight when rebels fired on their truck near the village of Assinovskaya in western Chechnya, ITAR-Tass news agency quoted local police as saying. Two armed men were detained on suspicion of participating in the attack, it said.

An officer of the Chechen presidential security service armed with a light machinegun, secures the village of Benoi during an ongoing military operation the Nozhai-Yurt district, 60 km (37 miles) southeast of Grozny in this Monday Feb. 28, 2005 photo. [AP]

Chechen rebels have been fighting Russian forces since September 1999, when Moscow relaunched its efforts to rein in militants in the southern separatist region. Before that, the two sides had fought to a standstill in a 20-month war that ended in 1996.

While the Russian troops have taken control of the northern plain in Chechnya, the rebels mount regular attacks from hideouts in the mountainous south.

The latest deadly raid took place Tuesday in the village of Sernovodskaya, 22 miles west of the Chechen capital, Grozny, Russia's Interior Ministry spokesman Boris Proshkin said on NTV television.

In the gunbattle, which lasted more than one hour, five rebels were killed and seven others were captured, he said.

The attack also left 18 policemen wounded, two of them in grave condition, said Anatoly Rabichuk, the head of a military hospital where they were treated.

The police chief in Penza, the Russian city where the police involved in the battle are stationed, said the attack was on a tent camp housing the unit, Interfax news agency later reported. The chief gave different figures, saying three of about 30 attackers were arrested and 29 police officers were injured,

Russia's Defense Ministry said Wednesday that the military has lost 15 aircraft and 22 pilots in action over Chechnya since 2001.

The Kremlin-backed Chechen president, meanwhile, assailed a Russian rights group for engaging in talks with rebel envoy Akhmed Zakayev in London last week.

"Who is killing the children of these mothers? Zakayev, Basayev and Maskhadov," President Alu Alkhanov said, referring to rebel commanders Shamil Basayev and Aslan Maskhadov. "They don't know those scum; they are the people of war."

Alkhanov told a Moscow news conference that his government was organizing a round-table in Grozny on the future of Chechnya, in addition to a similar forum planned for March 21 in Strasbourg, France. He also said that parliamentary elections were expected in Chechnya in October 2005.

He said that one of the biggest challenges facing his administration was finding work for some half a million unemployed in the region, including in the war-shattered oil industry, which accounts for about 70-80 percent of the regional government's revenues.

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