50 Reported Killed as Russia Pounds Chechnya

Federal warplanes and artillery launched wave after wave of fierce strikes on Chechen cities and a major rebel stronghold Friday as a senior U.S. official in Moscow urged a peaceful solution to the conflict in the breakaway Russian republic.

At least 50 refugees trying to flee the intense assaults were killed and many more were wounded Friday when a Russian jet fired a missile at a convoy of vehicles heading toward the adjacent republic of Ingushetia, Chechen officials said.

Witnesses said the jet dived at the convoy near the town of Samashki and launched at least one missile, setting cars and trucks ablaze.

Mikhail Margelov, a spokesman for the Russian information center, said planes had not bombed trucks carrying refugees, the Interfax news agency reported. He said aircraft fired at trucks that were shooting at them with machine guns near Shami-Yurt, about six miles east of Samashki, the agency said.

The intense strikes on Chechen cities underlined Russia’s determination to press ahead in its campaign to wipe out Islamic militants in Chechnya despite Western concerns.

In the Russian capital, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott told Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov that the United States hopes Russia will “turn to political levers as soon as possible” and “find a way to minimize civilian casualties.”

Russia says its campaign is aimed only at Chechen-based Islamic militants who twice invaded the neighboring republic of Dagestan this year and who are blamed for apartment bombings that killed about 300 people in Russia in September.

But there have been widespread reports of other civilian casualties: A rocket attack on Grozny’s central market last week killed scores of people.

“We are struggling against the sources of terrorism on Russian territory,” said President Boris N. Yeltsin’s spokesman, Dmitri D. Yakushkin, according to the Interfax news agency. No one has the right to interfere in Russia’s internal affairs, he reportedly said.

No casualty figures were immediately available for Friday’s fighting, which included an intense strike on the rebel stronghold of Bamut, in Chechnya’s southwest, along with airstrikes on Gudermes and the capital, Grozny.