Russians Pull Out of Chechen Town, Ready Barrage

Federal troops prepared Sunday to renew an offensive against the Chechen village of Komsomolskoye, which the military had claimed was under its control after a week of fierce fighting.

Russian forces withdrew to a safe zone about a mile away and set up howitzers, preparing to shell the southern village to flush out rebel holdouts, the military command said.

The military had claimed to have retaken Komsomolskoye on Wednesday, but a band of about 400 militants is still holding out in the southern part of the village, the military press center said Sunday.

Meanwhile, Russian planes and gunships continued to bomb and strafe mobile rebel groups between the Argun and Vedeno gorges in the southern Chechen mountains, an area that had been a longtime rebel stronghold and where new pockets of resistance continue to crop up.

Thousands of rebels still remain in the mountains, moving from base to base between two gorges, which lead to the border with Georgia, the Itar-Tass news agency reported the Russian military press service as saying.

Russian forces seized more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition, 11 explosive devices and nine firearms in the preceding 24 hours, according to the news agency report.

Acting President Vladimir V. Putin said Saturday that Moscow’s strategy was to form a barrier to stop the insurgents in the Russian republic from infiltrating Russian-controlled areas.