LOSSES CONTINUE FOR FEDERAL FORCES

A mine exploded on the outskirts of Grozny on August 21, destroying a vehicle in a federal military convoy and killing nine Russian troops, a Russian military source told Interfax on August 22.

Six federal soldiers were killed in attacks by separatist rebels during a twenty-four-hour period ending on August 24, an official of the Kadyrov administration told the Associated Press. Two died when their convoy was ambushed on the outskirts of Grozny, another two in a gunfight in the town of Tza-Vedeno in the southern highlands. In the Nadterechny district in the northern plains, considered the area most thoroughly controlled by the pro-Moscow forces, a mine blew up a military truck near the village of Goragorsk. One soldier was killed and nine others were wounded.

On August 25 the rebel guerrillas again showed that they can conduct attacks even in the heart of Grozny, where two federal soldiers were shot dead at a central market.

On August 28, according to the Kadyrov administration’s interior ministry, three servicemen of the federal interior ministry died in a firefight with rebel forces in the village of Sernovodsk in western Chechnya’s Achkhoi-Martan district.

Early in the morning of September 2, five gunmen broke into a local mayor’s home and murdered him. As reported by the news agency Itar-Tass, Sastaudi Tsitsaev was killed in his home in the town of Chechen-Aul just southeast of Grozny.

In late August, federal troops joined gunmen under the command of Ramzan Kadyrov in fierce fighting with a large group of separatist guerrillas in and around the village of Avtury in the Shali district in the southern highlands.