–NO END TO CARNAGE

On June 20 a truck bomb exploded near a Ministry of Justice building in Grozny. About forty people were wounded, seven seriously. In a June 23 article entitled “Terrorist acts in Chechnya are taking place as if according to a schedule,” correspondent Mainat Abdulaeva of Novaya gazeta reported that the truck was apparently driven by a single suicide bomber, whose body was so mangled by the explosion that there is little hope of establishing his identity. The terrorist driver managed to get to within about 200 yards of the government building where the newly formed Chechen State Council was to meet the next day. The explosion was so powerful that it left a crater ten yards wide and five to six yards deep. It destroyed approximately ten private buildings.

A mine apparently planted by Chechen rebels exploded on June 23 under an automobile carrying pro-Moscow Chechen policemen in Grozny’s Leninsky district, the news agency Interfax reported. One of the policemen was killed immediately; two others were hospitalized in serious condition.

On the outskirts of the village of Petropavlovsk near Grozny, rebel guerrillas opened fire on a unit of Russian Interior Ministry troops during the night of June 23-24. The federal unit’s commander, Lt. Nikolai Sinitsyn, was mortally wounded, according to a report from the news agency Novosti; one enlisted man was hospitalized. A similar firefight took place near the village of Eshilkhotoi in the highland Vedeno district. According to Novosti, no Russian servicemen died in that attack but three were wounded.

In Grozny itself, an official said that one policeman died in a gun battle with rebels in a car that the police had tried to stop. Two of the rebels were also reportedly killed.

–AMNESTY?