Desperation Grows in Besieged Grozny

Russia intensified its bombardment of the rebel capital of Grozny on Saturday, unleashing wave after wave of rocket and bomb attacks that local officials said left hundreds of civilians dead.

Residents have so far reported 260 deaths since the new Russian assault on the Chechen capital began two days ago, Grozny Mayor Lecha Dudayev told the Interfax news agency. He said he expects the final tally to be twice as large.

The attack is so intense that residents sheltering in basements are no longer safe, he added. The city has no bread or other food. During pauses in the bombing, residents scurry into the street to collect water from puddles.

“Grozny does not have a single hospital or medical clinic,” Dudayev said, according to Interfax. “If passersby don’t carry the wounded to a clinic outside of town, they just die on the spot.”

Russian officials describe the 2-day-old assault on Grozny as the decisive phase in their campaign to rid the country of “bandits and terrorists” and regain control of the separatist Chechen republic, which wrested itself from Russian rule in 1996 after a 21-month war for independence.

Russian forces are shelling the city from the air with powerful, long-range artillery--weapons that human rights groups say increase the number of civilian casualties. Russian officials have consistently discounted such reports, saying that their weapons have “pinpoint” accuracy and that many of the civilians killed were being used by the rebels as “human shields.”

Chechen guerrillas inflicted serious losses on the Russian army during street battles in the last war, and Russian officers are clearly reluctant to engage in any form of close combat. To date, their strategy has been to shell the rebels from a distance until they retreat.

“I think a dramatic change in hostilities will occur in the near future,” Chechen Security Minister Turpal Atgeriyev said in an interview from Grozny broadcast on the independent NTV network. “We wish the Russians would launch a [ground] assault. We want closer contact with them.”

The new wave of bombing has increased the flow of refugees out of Chechnya. Russian officials reported that nearly 2,000 people arrived in the last two days at refugee camps in the neighboring republic of Ingushetia. An estimated 220,000 had fled earlier. It is not known how many Chechen civilians remain inside the republic, including in Grozny.

The Russian military campaign began eight weeks ago after the rebels led two incursions into the neighboring republic of Dagestan and after a series of apartment bombings in Moscow and elsewhere killed nearly 300 people. Russian leaders say they have traced the bombers to Chechnya but have provided no evidence to support the claim.

Western leaders have harshly condemned the Russian campaign, saying the size and strength of the attacks are out of proportion to the danger posed by the terrorists Moscow says it is fighting.

On Saturday, outgoing International Monetary Fund Director Michel Camdessus warned that the West is unwilling to finance the war either directly or indirectly and may decide to cut off aid to Moscow if the fighting continues.

“The violent military campaign in Chechnya is creating very negative reactions against Russia in the world,” Camdessus told a conference in Madrid.

For their part, Russians overwhelmingly support the war, which has tapped into a national frustration with the West over its military intervention in Kosovo and lingering humiliation from their defeat in the previous war with Chechnya.

However, the Russian army’s image has suffered in recent days after an incident at a refugee camp in Ingushetia on Thursday in which a group of drunken Russian soldiers opened fire on a saleswoman who said she had no liquor in her kiosk. The woman was killed and two other people were injured. Five soldiers were arrested Friday and confessed Saturday to the killing, Russian news reports said.

In an effort to contain the crisis, which has been widely covered in the Russian media, Defense Minister Igor D. Sergeyev sent a letter of apology to Ingush President Ruslan S. Aushev.

“The killing has triggered deep indignation and condemnation on the part of all military personnel of the unified forces in the North Caucasus,” the defense minister said.