Chechan village struck by heavy fighting
Heavy fighting between Russian troops and rebels has persisted for the fourth straight day outside a village in Chechnya.
Meanwhile eight soldiers and police were killed in other clashes and mine blasts in the previous 24 hours, an official in the Moscow-backed regional administration said.
Russian defence minister Sergei Ivanov said law enforcement agencies had information about a rebel group he said might have been involved in the Russian helicopter crash in Chechnya on Monday that killed 116 people.
“I will give no preference to any version of the causes of the crash until I see the examination results,” the ITAR-Tass news agency quoted Mr Ivanov as saying during a visit to the Siberian city of Novosibirsk. He said he had spoken to survivors who said the helicopter was hit by a missile.
“This should be thoroughly checked and irreversible proofs should be obtained,” he said, adding that if the helicopter was hit by a missile there should be tell-tale signs on fragments.
Authorities have said the helicopter may have been shot down or crashed because of a technical problem.
Russian ground forces commander Colonel General Nikolai Kormiltsev, who is leading the crash investigation, said the craft’s engine was being examined and the cause would be known in a day or two, the Interfax news agency reported.
In eastern Chechnya on yesterday, federal forces fought rebels after shelling their positions overnight outside the village of Gansalchu in the Nozhai-Yurt district. Eight servicemen and at least 15 rebels have been killed in the four days of fighting there, an administration official said.
Earlier in the day, the deputy commander of Russian forces in the region that includes Chechnya, Colonel Boris Podoprigora, said the military launched artillery and air strikes against rebel positions outside Gansalchu at dawn but that ground troops had not moved into the area where the rebel group was located “because it proved much bigger than thought earlier.”.
Elsewhere, a Russian helicopter on Thursday mistakenly fired on Chechen police guarding an oil pipeline, killing two and wounding four, the administration official said.
Over the past 24 hours, three Russian servicemen were killed and five wounded as Russian positions came under rebel fire 18 times, the official said.
In addition, two soldiers were killed and six wounded when their armoured personnel carrier hit a mine outside the village of Tolstoi-Yurt, the official said.
One serviceman was killed and four wounded in a clash in the town of Argun, a policeman was killed when a shell hit a jeep in the village of Goragorsky and one riot policeman and four rebels were killed in a clash in the town of Bamut.
Later yesterday, the commander of Russian forces in Chechnya, Vladimir Moltenskoi, said federal troops had killed about 20 rebels near Bamut late on Thursday, part of what he said was a group of as many as 50 rebels in the area. He did not give a Russian casualty figure.
The administration official also said police and soldiers detained at least 100 people across Chechnya on suspicion of involvement with the separatist rebels in the small, mountainous southern region.
