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| Caucasus |
| Russian troops on the hunt for Basayev’s hard boyz |
| 2003-12-18 |
| Hundreds of Russian troops hunted a small army of Chechen rebels on the run on Tuesday after releasing nearly a dozen hostages they had seized in mountainous southern Russia. The rebels killed at least nine border guards on Monday when they surged into the villages of Shauri and Galatli — near where the borders of Chechnya, the Russian region of Dagestan and Georgia meet — and took 11 people hostage. "The hostages are now free... In the evening, the fighters left the village and at night headed off in an unknown direction," said Basyr Magomedov, head of the region where the villages are located. "They are probably still in the region, but no one can say where they are going." Russian news agencies said more than 700 interior ministry and special forces swept through the Dagestan mountains in pursuit of up to 100 rebels who had stormed into region on Monday. "The operation to pursue the fighters is continuing, four helicopters from the border guards are taking part," said Viktor Tsitsver, head of border guards in Makhachkala, Dagestan’s capital. The rebels, in a statement issued on a Web site, said their operations in the Caspian Sea region of Dagestan were part of a campaign to win independence that would eventually reach President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin. "If someone in Moscow thought that all this time we would fight only in Chechnya, he was deeply mistaken," said one of the group’s commanders, according to the Web site www.kavkazcenter.com. The site is linked to Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, who led the 1999 raids. "There will be no more living peacefully. Sooner or later, should Allah will it, our war will reach Putin’s Kremlin office," it said. Russian officials disagreed on what the group was doing in Dagestan, with some saying it was attempting to break through to Georgia where it could spend the winter in peace. The rebels said they were deliberately targeting Dagestan. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |