Dozens Are Killed in Fighting in Chechnya

Battles between Russian troops and separatist rebels continued in the southern republic of Chechnya on Saturday as officials reported 14 soldiers, five civilians and as many as 32 guerrillas dead in the latest violence.

Fighting in the Urus-Martan district broke out Thursday night, officials said, when rebels ambushed Russian checkpoints, attacked the local police and military commandant’s headquarters and raided the houses of local pro-Moscow officials.

During the clashes, five civilians were killed by Russian artillery fire in the nearby village of Gekhi-Chu, an official in the Moscow-backed Chechen administration said Saturday on condition of anonymity. Russian media reported that a 5-year-old girl was among the dead. The fighting in Gekhi-Chu continued Saturday, the official said.

At least nine Russian servicemen were killed and 10 wounded Friday in other nearby towns, the official said.

Ilya Shabalkin, a spokesman for the Russian military in Chechnya, said in televised remarks Saturday that 32 rebels were found dead after the clashes. The Chechen official did not confirm that information, and a rebels’ Web site said the separatists had suffered no losses.

Deaths in the conflict, now in its third year, are almost impossible to verify independently. Both sides routinely exaggerate enemy casualties and play down their own.

Elsewhere in Chechnya, rebels attacked Russian positions 16 times within the last 24 hours, killing three servicemen, the Chechen official said. Two more soldiers were killed when rebels attacked a military convoy near the village of Dyshny-Vedeno, the official said.

Russia, which withdrew from Chechnya after a 1994-96 war, returned in 1999 after rebel incursions into a neighboring region and after apartment bombings blamed on separatists killed more than 300 people in Russian cities. Russia says it now controls the republic, but its troops still die almost daily in rebel attacks.