CAUCASUS:

As fighting broke off in Dagestan, Russian official sources claimed 500-700 insurgents killed over two weeks of combat and admitted to the loss of forty-four Russian soldiers. The insurgent forces claim to have killed over 800 Russians and to have lost thirty-two of their own men. Insurgent leader Shamil Basaev, a Chechen, says the political objective is the removal of Dagestan’s President Magomedali Magomedov and Russia’s President Boris Yeltsin, whom he called “a faithful servant of Zionist capital.”