Russian Troops Ambushed in ‘Cleansed’ Area

After a bold ambush by rebels deep inside Russian-held territory in Chechnya left at least 20 elite police commandos dead, alarmed Russian leaders were forced Friday to confront the likelihood of a messy guerrilla war in the separatist republic.

The attack Thursday night took place in a suburb of Grozny, the Chechen capital, that had been held by Russian forces for a month and long ago declared “cleansed” of rebel fighters.

“No doubt about it, this is a tragedy from which a bitter lesson should be learned and very serious conclusions should be drawn,” said Sergei V. Yastrzhembsky, the Kremlin’s Chechnya spokesman.

The death toll was one of the highest for the Russians in a single battle in the war, which generals had declared all but over earlier this week. And it came amid reports of further fighting in Chechnya’s southern mountains, despite repeated Russian claims of battlefield successes. One general had even claimed that the war would be over by Wednesday.

“There is no doubt that what happened to the group of OMON servicemen in Grozny is a classic example of guerrilla warfare waged by Chechen fighters and an indication of what awaits Russian troops in Chechnya in the nearest future,” military analyst Alexander I. Zhilin said. “The victory that is said to have been won in Chechnya is just wishful thinking.”

The ambush came as a convoy of nine trucks drove through Grozny’s northwestern suburbs, bringing in about 100 fresh OMON troops--highly trained anti-riot, anti-terrorist police whose job is to flush out remaining rebel fighters and tighten Moscow’s hold on the reclaimed territory.

“The defeat . . . shows that no one will be spared if even the elite of the Russian forces--an OMON unit--got decimated in a matter of several minutes,” Zhilin said. “These were not rookies. They were the best of the best. But they were routed anyway.”

The site of the ambush had been seized from the rebels in early February, six weeks after Russia began a full-scale assault on the capital.

Deputy Interior Minister Ivan Golubev said a group of about 50 rebel fighters took the OMON convoy by surprise, firing on it from three sides with grenades and submachine guns.

“It was mostly in the first two to four minutes of the firefight that we suffered the heaviest losses,” Golubev said. “Our servicemen were still inside the vehicles and were not ready to rebuff the attack.”

The battle continued for four hours, leaving 29 injured in addition to the 20 dead, he said. Some reports suggested that the rebels had mined the troops’ escape routes and that civilians helped shield the guerrillas.

“The fighters simply hid behind a large number of women and children--there were about 500 people there,” said Mikhail Gorankin, an OMON officer involved in the battle who was interviewed by the NTV television network. “The local population cover up for them, whether because they are afraid or are on the fighters’ side, I do not really know.”

The OMON troops were traveling in simple transport trucks without armored escort--a fact that prompted some officials, including acting President Vladimir V. Putin, to threaten punishment of negligent officers.

“What is to be done in order to make sure that such things are not repeated in the future? One should not be careless,” Putin said during a visit to the Siberian oil town of Surgut. “The issue is the incompetence of those people who are responsible for arranging troop movement and combat activities. What else could it be? Only that.”

Russian officials, including the country’s top generals and Yastrzhembsky, have insisted that no guerrilla war will occur in Chechnya because the rebels have lost the support of the local population. Yastrzhembsky specifically denied Friday that the ambush was the opening salvo in a guerrilla war.

“I would rather say that this is a warning that the militants have sufficient strength and opportunity to mount such sneak attacks,” he said. “They have sufficient weapons to stage major provocations and acts of subversion.”

Yastrzhembsky also released new figures for Russia’s losses in the war: 1,420 soldiers killed, 3,896 wounded. He said the numbers included the casualties from the ambush.

But the respected Soldiers’ Mothers Committee, which has long maintained that the authorities are concealing the true scale of the losses, said its independent tally had reached 3,500 dead and 6,500 injured.

“The discrepancy in figures is very big, and you get an impression that no one wants to bear the responsibility for what is going on,” said Valentina D. Melnikova, a leader of the committee.