Suspected Rebel Bomb Blast Kills 6 Police Officers in Chechnya

A suspected rebel bomb blast killed six policemen in Chechnya on Wednesday, denting official claims of a return to normalcy in the renegade republic as its pro-Moscow government met in its new offices for the first time.

The dawn blast flattened part of a building used by an interior ministry organized-crime unit in Chechnya’s second-largest city, Gudermes. Television pictures showed one wing of the building reduced to a mass of bricks and splintered planks.

An aide to Sergei V. Yastrzhembsky, the Kremlin’s top spokesman on Chechnya, confirmed that six people had been killed. Five others were seriously wounded in the attack and taken to a hospital, officials said.

Senior officials had earlier denied any deaths, saying that four people had been pulled alive from the rubble.

The aide said a second device, containing about 260 pounds of explosives, was found in the Chechen capital, Grozny. It was rendered safe by bomb disposal experts.

According to Chechnya’s prosecutor, Viktor Dakhnov, all the dead were ethnic Chechen police officers, and one body remained buried under the rubble. He said criminal proceedings had been launched on charges of terrorism.

The blast, blamed on separatist guerrillas, appeared designed to puncture authorities’ portrayal of a return to normalcy following Monday’s move by Chechnya’s local pro-Moscow administration to a refurbished furniture factory in Grozny.

The officials had been based in Gudermes since the fall of 1999, when Russia’s second offensive in the region got underway.

An official in the Pro-Russian administration of Chechen Prime Minister Stanislav Ilyasov told the Interfax news agency that the government’s meeting Wednesday showed that “the situation in the republic is changing for the better as authorities have now returned to the Chechen capital.”

Officials said the meeting would examine reconstruction, crop sowing and full restoration of rail services following the first train journey this week from Chechnya to Moscow in two years.

Meanwhile, Russian media reported two mine explosions and an exchange of gunfire in Argun, east of Grozny, and said six Chechen fighters had been captured in the west of the region, including two field commanders.

Russian authorities have been at pains in recent weeks to point to what they say is a return to normal life in Chechnya, with schools reopening and services resuming nearly 20 months into Russia’s second military offensive in the region.

President Vladimir V. Putin’s envoy to southern Russia, Viktor Kazantsev, said he expects the transfer of all local government to Grozny will be completed by next month.

“To complete the move, we have to resolve a series of technical issues, particularly ensuring both communications and reliable security,” he told an Internet news conference.

Russian forces have established tenuous control over Chechnya, located on Russia’s southern fringe, but they are subject to constant ambushes, shootings and bomb attacks.

About 3,000 servicemen have died in the military drive. There are no reliable figures for civilian or rebel casualties.

For more than a year, the rebels have repeatedly embarrassed Moscow authorities by launching attacks on targets associated with the Russian military and pro-Moscow administration.

These include coordinated car bombings in which at least 30 people died in July and a series of raids on Russian convoys and positions in mountainous areas that killed up to several dozen servicemen at a time.

Rebels also inflicted heavy casualties in raids during Russia’s 1994-96 campaign, which culminated in a Russian pullout and the extension of de facto independence to Chechnya.