Ferocity of Russian Attack Alarms Chechen Officials

Fierce battles broke out Saturday between invading Russian troops and guerrilla defenders of Chechnya, the sharpest indication yet that Moscow’s war on the breakaway republic is escalating beyond a limited punitive action.

Alarmed Chechen officials said dozens of armored columns rolled into the far northern villages of Alpatova and Chernokosova. The Chechens said that they had driven the Russians out of Chernokosova, but that as night fell, Russian troops still held Alpatova, which is 60 miles north of Grozny, the Chechen capital.

As night fell, officials in Naursky, a town in northern Chechnya, said heavy fighting continued nearby and in Shyokovsky, a neighboring region. “I can’t count the wounded. The fighting’s too heated,” Naursky Mayor Daus Bagirev said.

Chechnya’s vice president vowed his people would fight off the Russians, but also called for negotiations.

“Russia has concentrated a military contingent of 200,000 around Chechnya, but we are not afraid of it,” Vakha Arsanov said in Tbilisi, the capital of neighboring Georgia, where he arrived Saturday for treatment of a back problem. “This time we won’t take prisoners, but will kill them all.”

Reports from Moscow gave a more modest version of combat. Officials there reported the seizure of only one village, Borozdinovka, two miles inside the Chechen border, taken without one shot being fired. Generally, Russian officials have tried to downplay the level of fighting in Chechnya because Russians are sensitive after losing a humiliating three-year war to the Chechens in 1996.

Russia began air raids on Chechnya last month after Muslim militants based in the territory invaded neighboring Dagestan, seeking to create an Islamic state in southern Russia. The militants have also been blamed for a series of bombings in Russia last month that killed about 300 people.

At first, Russia billed the counterattacks as an effort to wipe out “terrorists” and “bandits.” However, in recent days officials in Moscow have spoken of setting up a defensive barrier inside Chechnya to stop infiltrators, or even to establish a rival government on captured territory.