Chechen Rebels Face Russian Armor

Stung by its heaviest losses in Chechnya in more than a year, the Russian military sent armor clanking into Grozny on Friday to smash a rebel onslaught, but guerrillas dug in by the hundreds or formed bands to stage hit-and-run attacks across the war-wrecked capital.

By midafternoon, Nikolai Tkachev, chief of the Russian military headquarters in Chechnya, reported that, as a result of “Operation Cleanup,” the militants were being driven out of Grozny.

But fierce exchanges of machine-gun fire later erupted, and battles reportedly raged near the former presidential palace.

Shell bursts rent the air and Russian helicopter gunships throbbed overhead, correspondents on the scene reported.

In southern Grozny, repeated Russian attacks failed to break the rebels’ blockade of 200 Russian soldiers and Chechen police, who have been cut off for three days.

After nightfall, one Russian TV channel reported that detachments of up to 200 separatists were still barricaded in the central city hospital, a medical clinic and a police headquarters. Other fighters formed small, mobile bands to move around Grozny and attack Russian checkpoints, NTV said, quoting military sources.

Chechnya’s Moscow-installed deputy prime minister, Abdul Bugayev, said the rebels formed pockets of resistance in every Grozny neighborhood. At one point Friday, he said, fighting was raging about 100 yards away from government headquarters.

A day earlier, Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin and his Security Council agreed in general terms on a plan to end the costly, unpopular war in the breakaway region of southern Russia before Yeltsin runs for reelection June 16.

Tkachev said the rebels’ attack on Grozny that began Wednesday seemed to be timed to show that a genuine settlement cannot be made without the Chechen independence leader, Gen. Dzhokar M. Dudayev.

On Friday, Dudayev’s fighters used radio broadcasts to call on Russian troops to lay down their arms and to promise them safe passage home.

Authorities said Chechen police also detained a group of rebels disguised as police or soldiers.

*

In the past three days, Russian forces, including elite paratroopers, have suffered their heaviest losses since Yeltsin dispatched the army to crush the Chechen independence movement in December 1994.

One Russian officer told the Interfax news agency that casualties as a result of the Grozny fighting were 70 killed, 160 wounded and 40 missing among Interior Ministry troops alone, not including Defense Ministry forces.

NTV said a “reliable source” estimated that more than 100 Russians had been killed altogether and at least 40 wounded.

Official Russian estimates put rebel deaths at up to 400, but there was no independent confirmation.

Bugayev reported “great losses” among Grozny’s civilians, for whom Friday should have been a holiday--International Women’s Day.

Instead, the city was practically without drinking water after militants blew up three pumping stations, local officials said. Bread also was running short in some neighborhoods.

*

As fighting flared, radio and television broadcasts appealed to residents to stay indoors and off the streets, but many fled.

The Chechen government held an emergency meeting, and Russian Interior Minister Anatoly S. Kulikov, accompanied by the leader of the republic’s Moscow-installed government, Doku Zavgayev, flew into Grozny to work on peace proposals as ordered by Yeltsin.

By nightfall, the military situation was confused and reports contradictory.

Gen. Vyacheslav Tikhomirov, commander of Russian army and Interior Ministry troops in Chechnya, said his soldiers were back in complete control of Chechnya’s capital and had shown “who is the boss.” But he acknowledged that “there is still a little bit of work that remains to be done.”

The Russian forces’ offensive, backed by armored personnel carriers, began at 1 p.m.

Yuri Plugin, the region’s deputy interior minister, said the soldiers were supposed to “fully seize the initiative” by midafternoon.

But NTV by evening was suggesting that hostilities would last at least 24 more hours. Everything moving on Grozny’s roads was being shot at, it said.

Also Friday, Dudayev’s fighters captured a petroleum refinery but were beaten back by government forces when they tried to seize Grozny’s television center, reports said.

*

As a result of parleys with the rebels, Bugayev said, the director and chief engineer of a city power station were freed Friday.

But Russian officials said there was no word on the fate of missing workers of a Russian construction company, said to number 100, who also were allegedly taken hostage by pro-Dudayev forces.