Russians Strike Chechens in Mountains

Hundreds of Chechen rebels battled with Russian forces on the edge of Chechnya’s southern mountains Tuesday, as Russian jets and ground forces battered the breakaway republic’s capital, Grozny.

“We are turning up the heat in the mountains,” said Lt. Gen. Gennady Troshev, Russia’s commander on the eastern front. “They just don’t know where to run.”

Russian troops control all of Chechnya’s northern plains and have encircled Grozny, which contains as many as 50,000 civilians--and several thousand rebel fighters.

“I heard bombing without a break on Grozny,” said Vakha Ovdanirov, a 60-year-old refugee who left a suburb of Grozny on Tuesday and traveled to the neighboring Russian republic of Ingushetia. “Planes and rockets are flying over constantly. The whole sky is black from smoke.”