Russia Near Deal With Rebels Over Hostages : Europe: Prime minister, Chechen commander reportedly reach tentative accord, which calls for cease-fire, peace talks in breakaway republic. Another 32 captives are released today after 200 were freed earlier.

Prime Minister Victor S. Chernomyrdin and the Chechen separatist commander whose rebels are holding hundreds of men, women and children hostage in a hospital agreed in principle early today on the release of most of those captives in exchange for a cease-fire and peace talks in Chechnya.

The tentative deal between Chernomyrdin and Shamil Basayev, which was reached in an early morning telephone conversation, could end Russia’s worst hostage crisis. The two men were slated to talk again later today.

About 32 hostages were released Sunday morning after a night of unusual calm.

On Saturday, Chechen separatists beat back a second attempt by Russian troops to storm the provincial hospital, where the hostages had been held since Wednesday in a building left charred and smoking from Russian artillery attacks.

At least 227 hostages were released during on-and-off negotiations over the course of the day. Among them was a group of women who were permitted to carry their babies, some newborns, out of the barricaded hospital.

At least five Russian soldiers were reported killed in two bursts of chaotic fighting that pitted the commandos, backed up by military helicopters, armored personnel carriers and grenade launchers, against rebels armed with semiautomatic weapons. The death toll among hostages surpassed 100.

Angry and desperate local residents demanded that President Boris N. Yeltsin come home from the Group of Seven economic summit in Halifax, Canada, to save the hostages. Many of those freed said they were more afraid of being killed in a Russian attack than of being executed by the Chechens.

“They said more women died from Russian bullets than from the Chechens,” said Dr. Viktor D. Nikitayev, 48, who examined 110 freed women Saturday and allowed all but three to return home.

However, the doctor said several of the babies born to pregnant women forced to leave the maternity ward had been stillborn or died during their mothers’ three-day captivity. And doctors leaving the compound Saturday told Russian lawmakers that five civilians were shot by the rebels Friday, in addition to five Russian officers who were executed a day earlier.

Budennovsk’s ordeal began Wednesday when Chechen rebel fighters raided the farm-belt town, tried to blow up a chemical plant, battled with police and captured hundreds of hostages to support their demand that Russia cease military operations in Chechnya.

Yeltsin said he had authorized storming the hospital before he departed for Canada, but a spokesman for Chernomyrdin contradicted that by claiming that the soldiers had launched an attack impulsively without orders from Moscow.

Residents Terrorized

Meanwhile, contrary to official reports that the fighting was contained in the hospital compound, snipers terrorized one neighborhood for at least an hour Saturday afternoon.

“It’s Chechens!” cried Oleg Smirnov as he dashed into the doorway of an apartment building for shelter from a sudden burst of fierce gunfire. “They’re not discriminating. They’re just shooting at everybody.”

Lyubov Shelkoplyasova, 45, had just been released from the hospital where she was held hostage for three days when the fighting broke out in her neighborhood. Terrified of being captured again, she stampeded with her family into the basement of their apartment building to hide.

“Lock the door, quick!” she screamed as explosions from what sounded like a grenade launcher rocked the neighborhood.

Russian troops at a nearby checkpoint said three of their men were wounded in the fighting, one of them shot in the stomach. They said they had been brought in Saturday morning from Chechnya to reinforce the troops already in Budennovsk but had not succeeded in catching the snipers.

“They are still here around those houses,” said a young warrant officer who gave his name as Alexander Nikolayevich.

He pointed to some white-brick one-story houses, identical to all the others on the street, that seemed to shimmer in the oppressive heat wave that lulled this town of 54,000 into an exhausted torpor whenever the shooting stopped. “Maybe, like us, they just want to take a break,” he said.

Conflicting Accounts

Senior Russian officials in Budennovsk refused to speak to journalists Saturday, and soldiers and civilians leaving the hospital compound gave conflicting accounts of what was going on inside.

Released hostages reported that hundreds of people were being held at gunpoint and that food, water and medicine were running out.

Saturday’s first Russian attack began at dawn. Witnesses said some of the hostages waved white flags from the hospital windows and called out, “Save us!”

“They organized a chorus and shouted all together, ‘Don’t shoot!’ ” said Leonid Shulga, who lives across the street.

The Chechen fighters were said to have put all the male hostages in the hospital basement, which they claimed to have mined. On the second and third floors, they allegedly used female hostages as human shields against the Russians.

“They would post two women in a doorway and shoot out from behind their back, or they would put an automatic rifle between a woman’s legs and shoot from there,” said Sergei Kuznetsov, a photographer who accompanied the crack Russian Alpha troops and other special forces on the aborted first raid. His account was later confirmed by a junior Russian officer.

The Russians had captured the first floor of the hospital, with the Chechens still holding the second and third floors, when the troops received an order to stop, Kuznetsov said. They retreated, ceding the first floor back to the Chechens.

Meanwhile, an artillery shell had started a fire in the attic of the building. One woman, desperate to escape the flames, made a rope of bedsheets and tried to slide down from the third floor, Kuznetsov said.

“She fell down, but she was in such shock she just stood up and walked away,” he said. “Nobody shot her, and she escaped.”

At least two Alpha soldiers were killed and two others wounded, Kuznetsov said. In addition, the body of a severely burned Russian major was carried out of the hospital compound. The soldiers in the armored personnel carrier that brought him said the shellshocked officer had been left behind in the hospital when the fire broke out.

Russian and Chechen fighters reached a temporary truce early in the morning, and about 60 hostages were released. Several blamed the Russian authorities for endangering their lives by ordering the hospital stormed.

One local police officer walked up to one of the Alpha troops, grabbed his rifle and said: “Don’t shoot. I have a sister in there.”

About 2 p.m., the truce broke down and Russian forces again tried to advance. A Russian lieutenant named Alexander said the Alpha forces tried to gain 30 yards but had to fall back under heavy fire. He said one or two Russian soldiers were killed and 10 or more wounded in the second failed attack.

The Itar-Tass news agency reported that a total of five Russian soldiers were killed Saturday.

But Alexander said the Chechens had suffered even heavier losses. He estimated that one-third of the 75 secessionists barricaded in the hospital were dead or wounded.

Demands Softened

Basayev, the Chechen commander, softened his demands slightly Saturday.

Previously, he had insisted that Russian troops be withdrawn from Chechnya, where a six-month military campaign that has included mass bombing and shelling of civilian targets has left Kremlin soldiers in control of most of the republic.

On Saturday, however, Basayev instead proposed that Chechnya be divided into Russian and Chechen sectors along the road that bisects the republic from east to west. Northern Chechnya has traditionally been more pro-Russian, while pro-independence sentiment is stronger in the mountainous south.

Basayev also warned that, if his conditions are not met, terrorist attacks may be carried out elsewhere on Russian soil.

An Appeal to Rebels

The prime minister later went on national television to appeal directly to the rebels.

“I know some of you can see me and hear me now,” Chernomyrdin said. “I ask you to stop, think again and free the innocent people. . . . Nothing can justify this.”

Russian officials, apparently embarrassed by the failed rescue attempts, seemed to dodge responsibility for the crisis.

Valery Grishan, deputy chief of the Government Press Service, released a statement saying that the troops had attacked without orders because they “reacted emotionally to the cries of hostages and the sound of shooting inside the building.” Grishan said there was no advance battle plan for storming the hospital, only draft guidelines for how the troops should react if the Chechens began massacring the hostages.

Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir F. Shumeiko said that the decision was made after relatives of the hostages demanded that troops be sent in to rescue the captives.

At the G-7 summit, meanwhile, Yeltsin seemed to be in an unusually freewheeling mood for a leader confronted with a domestic disaster and said he had no intention of responding to a Russian Parliament appeal for him to return home and pay a visit to Budennovsk.

“This is a bad mistake, a bad move on their part, because now I myself [would] become a hostage to these very same bandits by having to go back there,” he said.

Times staff writer Carol J. Williams in Halifax, Canada, contributed to this report.

* YELTSIN DEFENDS ACTIONS: The Russian president angrily rebuffed demands for an end to the Chechen war at the Group of Seven economic summit. A14