Russian troops continue to fight rebels in Chechnya

VLADIKAVKAZ, Russia -- Russia's defense minister vowed Monday to keep battling rebels until they are flushed of out the mountains of southern Chechnya, where heavy fighting had broken out hours before he spoke.

"We will continue these targeted operations until there are no bandits left in the mountains," Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said.

Ivanov spoke at a Moscow news conference with his visiting counterpart from South Korea. Also Monday, President Vladimir Putin met with European Union leaders and demanded world support to fight the rebels, whom he called international terrorists.

Five rebels killed

Ivanov said Russian forces had killed five rebels after surrounding a group of about 30 overnight in wooded mountains near the village of Kharsenoi, in the Shatoi district about 33 miles southwest of Chechnya's capital, Grozny.

Col. Boris Podoprigora, deputy commander of Russian forces in Chechnya, said earlier that six of the rebels had been killed and 12 wounded by the afternoon. Ivanov said two Russian servicemen were wounded in the fighting.

However, an official in Chechnya's Moscow-backed administration, speaking on condition of anonymity, said two Russian servicemen were killed in the clash.

The official also said that in the previous 24 hours, two servicemen were killed in fighting near the border with the Dagestan region, two others when their jeep exploded and one when an armored personnel carrier came under fire.

Russian forces detained at least 180 people in and around Grozny, pressing ahead with a security crackdown launched after a rebel hostage-taking raid in Moscow and a series of attacks on Russian helicopters by rebels near Grozny.

Chechen separatists fought Russian troops to a standstill in a 1994-96 war, emerging from the southern mountains and attacking Grozny after being driven back to their highland strongholds, where federal forces never managed to eliminate them.

A 1996 peace deal left the separatists in charge, but Russian troops poured back into Chechnya in 1999, after rebel attacks in a neighboring region and after a series of apartment-house bombings that killed some 300 people and were blamed on the rebels.

After months of intensive combat, the second war had settled into a series of smaller-scale attacks as well as Russian search operations that have provoked allegations of torture and killing of civilians. The rebels have again been pushed into the mountains.

Putin said Sunday that he would support the acceleration of political steps to restore peace in Chechnya, but defended the military campaign Monday during meetings with European leaders in Belgium.

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