Chechen Raiders Take 2,000 Hostage in Russia

Hundreds of Chechen guerrillas invaded the Caucasus town of Kizlyar before dawn Tuesday, knocking out communications, attacking the airport and railway station and grabbing at least 2,000 hostages while threatening to turn the quiet community into “hell and ashes.”

In a carbon copy of a terror rampage seven months ago, the militants demanding withdrawal of Russian federal forces from the vanquished republic of Chechnya shot at least two of the hostages, Russian media reported, in a coldblooded underscoring of their conditions for peace.

At least 20 others--policemen, civilians and some of the gunmen loyal to Chechen rebel leader Dzhokar M. Dudayev--died in the storming of the town that restaged the militants’ bloody maneuvers in Budennovsk last June. More than 150 people died in that hostage incident, the worst rebel reprisal since President Boris N. Yeltsin sent troops into Chechnya in December 1994.

A relative of Dudayev’s, Salman Raduyev, led the attack on Kizlyar, a small industrial center of about 40,000 in the autonomous region of Dagestan, bordering Chechnya.

Dagestani authorities later told the Itar-Tass news agency that rebel claims of holding 3,000 Kizlyar residents were accurate.

In a chillingly matter-of-fact account aired on videotape by Independent Television, Raduyev explained the assault as a military operation to take out a helicopter base that went wrong. When the site proved to have only three combat aircraft instead of the eight they had expected, the Dudayev loyalists “decided to stay in town a little longer,” Raduyev said.

“If the federal authorities and the government of Dagestan want this, we can turn this town into hell and ashes,” vowed the bearded rebel commando. “We are the soldiers of Gen. Dudayev, ready to fulfill his every order.”

The latest deadly raid by angry Chechens appeared likely to set off another government crisis and herald a renewal of all-out war in Chechnya. At least 20,000 people have been killed already in 13 months of fighting.

After Dudayev supporters negotiated their escape from the Budennovsk standoff, Kremlin leaders and the militants reached a partial peace accord July 30 calling for release of prisoners and disengagement.

But that cease-fire has been unraveling rapidly in the absence of a political agreement, as evidenced by last month’s brutal attack by federal forces on the rebel stronghold of Gudermes. At least 600 people died in that battle, federal authorities reported, about half of them civilians.

Raduyev, who is married to a Dudayev niece, comes from Gudermes.

As the severity of the Kizlyar drama became obvious, Yeltsin summoned his ministers for defense, interior forces, intelligence and border control to the Kremlin and excoriated them for allowing “yet another blow” to Russian security.

Just back at work after two months of recuperation from a mild heart attack, Yeltsin raged against the laxity that allowed Dudayev’s forces en route to the hostage-taking to slip past thousands of federal troops.

“The power structures did not draw any lessons [from Budennovsk],” Yeltsin thundered as the uniformed generals sat contritely across the table. “The border guards slept through everything!”

Dudayev loyalists stormed Kizlyar before sunrise, first seizing and barricading a strategic bridge into the town, then jamming military and police radio networks to frustrate defenses. The gunmen then infiltrated the city hospital, taking patients in the maternity ward as hostages and padding their human shield with other civilians rounded up from nearby apartment buildings.

Federal security forces, including armored units and paratroops, encircled the rebels, and a tense standoff ensued.

Raduyev said in the videotape that he arrived with more than 500 Chechen fighters, another figure validated by officials in the Dagestani capital, Makhachkala.

The footage showed wards full of women and babies huddled on the floor of the seized hospital.

The gunmen demanded a pullout of federal forces from Chechnya and said they would begin killing their hostages unless Kremlin authorities took immediate action.

Two of the captives were shot to death at point-blank range just before nightfall, Tass reported.

Dagestani officials made an attempt at negotiating with the guerrillas. But when the talks collapsed after an hour, fierce fighting broke out, the agency said.

Early today, a high-ranking Dagestani security official told Russia’s Interfax news agency that the rebels had demanded buses so they could leave with 300 of their hostages for Gudermes, Chechnya’s second-largest city. The hostage-takers were reportedly again negotiating with local officials.

The standoff in Kizlyar appeared a mirror image of the Budennovsk crisis, in which federal authorities twice unsuccessfully stormed the Chechens.

Yeltsin evaded much of the dubious limelight during the Budennovsk incident because he was initially attending a meeting of the Group of Seven industrialized nations in Canada and then kept a low profile after returning home.