Chechen Rebels, Safely Back Home, Free Human Shields : Russia: Guerrilla commander gets hero’s welcome in village of breakaway republic. Gunmen ask forgiveness.

Chechen gunmen released the last captives of their odyssey of terror late Tuesday after piloting the 139 human shields through hostile Russian-held territory to a mountain stronghold of their flagging rebellion.

The harrowing ordeal ended for the captives on a darkened road near the village of Zandak, where the Chechens reportedly asked forgiveness from the hostages they had taken to war-ravaged Chechnya as protection against Russian retaliation along the way.

Guerrilla leader Shamil Basayev, who masterminded the incident that left about 100 dead in the southern Russian town of Budennovsk, was given a hero’s welcome upon arrival in Zandak, reporter Alexei Samoletov told state-run Russian Television in its final Tuesday night broadcast.

The released captives left in the same buses that brought them to Zandak for the neighboring region of Dagestan, where they were taken to the village of Novolakskoye for food and rest, Samoletov reported.

“That is what they need most of all now, as some of them haven’t had any food for five days,” Samoletov, who was among the hostages, told the Moscow anchorman by phone.

He said Basayev “was greeted by the local people like a national hero. They hugged and kissed him and shouted ‘Long live Allah!’

“When Basayev came up to the journalists and asked them to forgive him, they said: ‘God will forgive you. As for us, we wish never to see you again,’ ” the young journalist reported breathlessly from the scene.

Basayev had ordered the ragged convoy of seven buses to proceed through cordons of Russian soldiers and armor despite the refusal of the Russian military commander in the region to endorse assurances by Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin that the captors and hostages would be granted safe passage.

Military defiance notwithstanding, Russian and Chechen negotiators agreed at internationally mediated peace talks in Grozny, the ruined Chechen capital, to extend a temporary cease-fire through Friday. But the talks were otherwise overshadowed by the drama surrounding the hostage convoy.

The deadly terrorist act that has shaken Russia from the presidency on down came to a chaotic conclusion after nightfall, when Basayev and the 72 other surviving Chechen fighters who took the rebel cause to Russia proper reached the relative safety of what is left of their separatist republic.

It was not immediately clear whether Russian forces that stalked the bus convoy throughout its more than 24-hour journey from Budennovsk allowed the hostage-takers to escape unfettered or if they unleashed a threatened fresh offensive to punish them for the campaign of terror that has shattered what little sense of security remained for the troubled people of Russia.

The commander of Russian forces in Chechnya, Gen. Anatoly S. Kulikov, had refused to say he would honor Chernomyrdin’s order that the hostage caravan be allowed to proceed to a rebel haven without hindrance--a concession granted in exchange for the freedom of more than 1,000 terrified captives grabbed in Budennovsk last Wednesday.

The red-and-white buses carrying the last hostages and their fleeing captors were flanked by Russian armor and buzzed by helicopter gunships throughout the oft-stalled journey to Zandak.

The convoy had idled most of the second day of the circuitous journey from Budennovsk in the town of Khasavyurt, in Dagestan, after scouts for Basayev warned him that there might be an ambush ahead.

Basayev demanded fresh assurances from Kulikov that Russian forces would refrain from attacking the convoy but was refused.

Kulikov was quoted by the Itar-Tass news agency as saying he “obeys orders only from his superiors.”

His refusal to reiterate Chernomyrdin’s promise probably reflected the distaste felt by top officials of the “power ministries” responsible for the army, police and security forces for the government’s decision to concede to peace talks with the fighters loyal to Chechen rebel leader Dzhokar M. Dudayev.

Defense Minister Pavel S. Grachev had vowed to crush the Chechen militants once the hostages were freed, and the back seat that President Boris N. Yeltsin took to Chernomyrdin in the crisis suggested that he too might have preferred a resort to brute force to resolve the standoff.

After the fruitless 11-hour wait in Khasavyurt, Basayev ordered the buses carrying 114 “volunteer” officials and civilians, plus 16 journalists and nine members of the Russian Parliament, to proceed through the conquered wasteland held by Russian troops toward Zandak.

“Taking into account the grave condition of the wounded and the extremely exhausted hostages who have been under serious stress for six days now, I have decided not to wait for a response from the authorities of the Russian Federation,” Basayev told Russian Radio before setting off.

The bus convoy was also trailed by a refrigerator truck carrying the corpses of 21 Basayev gunmen killed in shootouts with Russian troops and police in Budennovsk and during two failed attempts by government forces to free the captives by storming the hospital where they were being held. Dozens of captives also died in those assaults.

The hostages released in Zandak had traded places Monday with more than 1,000--some reports put the figure as high as 2,000--exhausted, terrified people initially grabbed by Basayev’s gang in Budennovsk as pawns to broker an end to the Russian government’s war against Chechnya.

Basayev, who coolly and dispassionately directed the hostage-taking, is a fearsome warrior who has lost children and other relatives in the 6-month-old Russian army crackdown on Chechen separatism.

The journalists among the volunteer hostages accompanying Basayev and his gunmen provided Russians with an unusual front-row seat for following the drama through radio and television.

Independent NTV television carried frequent interviews with Basayev, airing his complaints about the unavailability and indecisiveness of Kremlin officials.

NTV reported that 123 people were freed in Zandak, attributing the discrepancy between that number and the total of 139 who departed Budennovsk to sporadic releases along the way.

Russian media reported that all of the remaining captives had been freed, although Itar-Tass said three of the journalists had decided to remain with Basayev to watch how the band of rebels fared once their human shields were abandoned.

The Kremlin’s handling of the protracted emergency came in for scathing criticism by a broad range of political forces.

Pro-market reformist Yegor T. Gaidar denounced Yeltsin for “extremely unclear and inadequate” actions in response to the crisis, and the Communist Party initiated a campaign for Yeltsin’s impeachment.

Chernomyrdin, despite having negotiated the release of the Budennovsk hostages in televised pleas to Basayev, faces a no-confidence vote as early as today over the incident.

Peace talks between the government and Dudayev supporters were scheduled to resume today under the mediation of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which has a delegation of observers in Grozny.

Russian and Chechen negotiators agreed prior to the hostage release Tuesday to suspend all hostilities until Friday while they try to negotiate a full peace settlement that would include an exchange of prisoners, gradual disarmament, Chechen elections in the presence of outside observers and reconstruction of the war-battered republic.

The three-day truce, agreed to after two days of talks in Grozny, was hailed as a breakthrough by both sides, although military commanders did not take part.

The cease-fire agreement, initially accepted by Chernomyrdin on Sunday, is the first between the two sides since one in early January that quickly collapsed. There have also been several unilateral truces declared by one side or the other, with little effect on the fighting.

Times staff writer Richard Boudreaux in Grozny contributed to this report.