Rights Group Says Russians Killed Dozens More Civilians

Dozens of civilians were shot to death when Russian soldiers rampaged through a suburb of Chechnya’s capital earlier this month, human rights observers said Tuesday, calling it the worst massacre of the war in the separatist republic.

The New York-based group Human Rights Watch said it has evidence of 62 killings in Aldy, in western Grozny, after Chechen rebels abandoned the capital at the end of January and the Russians moved in Feb. 5. The group said it is examining reports that 20 more people were killed in the suburb.

According to several witnesses, soldiers shot one woman in front of her 9-year-old daughter.

“Almost every house the Russians went to, there were one or two bodies. Before they came to my house, they killed old women, old men, they even killed dogs,” one 50-year-old woman said in an interview with Human Rights Watch researcher Peter Bouckaert. She did not want her name published.

The group said the latest casualties bring the number of documented killings of civilians by Russian troops in Chechnya, mainly in Grozny and its suburbs, to 123 since early December.

The Kremlin’s spokesman on the war, Sergei V. Yastrzhembsky, has repeatedly rejected the growing evidence that Russian soldiers have executed many Chechen civilians, dismissing it as rebel propaganda.

But witness reports documented by Human Rights Watch convey scenes of horror in the days after Russian troops moved into Grozny. Soldiers threw grenades into basements where people were hiding, looted homes, demanded money, raped women, shot people and burned down houses, the group said.

The new reports of atrocities come as Russia prepares to honor its military today on Defender of the Fatherland Day. The day will bring only bitter memories to the people of Chechnya--it is the 56th anniversary of the date Soviet dictator Josef Stalin began his mass deportation of the Chechen population in cattle cars to Kazakhstan, where thousands died of starvation.

Russian forces in Chechnya are on alert in case of a rebel attack today. All travel in Chechnya is banned, except for military personnel, until Thursday.

Human Rights Watch on Tuesday released the names of 32 people it said were reported by at least two sources as having been killed in the Aldy massacre. It said it has the names of 62 victims, although Aldy residents have put the number of dead at 82.

There are fears that the toll could go higher as residents discover more bodies in ruined buildings.

Bouckaert has been based in Ingushetia, a Russian republic neighboring Chechnya, since December, documenting accounts from refugees about abuses in the war, mainly by the Russian side but also by Chechen rebels. The names of most witnesses are not released because they fear retribution.

One witness, Sapiyat, a 41-year-old woman, said that when the Russians arrived on the morning of Feb. 5, everyone went into the streets, waiting with their passports for the soldiers to come.

“We started hearing gunshots from the other side of town. When the soldiers were passing through Voronezhsky Street, they killed everyone in their path--the same with Mazayev, Zemlyansky and Bryansky streets. On that day, 82 people were killed,” she said in an interview with Bouckaert.

“Several witnesses were too afraid to talk to us. People were specifically told not to talk about this. They were threatened. The soldiers told people they’d come back if news of this got out,” Bouckaert said Tuesday.

A week ago, Human Rights Watch reported that it had confirmed that 44 civilians, including children, were executed by Russian troops in northwestern Grozny. The 123 total documented killings include 17 in the village of Alkhan-Yurt, just south of Grozny, in early December.

Even as the new reports of civilian casualties emerged, acting Russian President Vladimir V. Putin was praising the military Tuesday and dismissing as lies claims that it was in a state of decay.

“The armed forces are the most important guarantor of peace and tranquillity in Chechnya,” he said. “Right now our comrades in arms are fighting terrorists and gangsters. They know what they are fighting for.

“Their task is to destroy the breeding ground of banditry, impose security and stability, restore the rule of law and protect Russia’s unity,” Putin said during a trip to Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad.

Putin recently appointed a human rights observer, Vladimir Kalamanov, whose job is to investigate abuses in Chechnya.