Russians kill 19 rebels in Chechnya

The Chechen band was surrounded and attacked by troops in thick fog near the village of Mesker-Yurt, 20 kilometres east of the regional capital Grozny, army headquarters told the Itar-Tass news agency. The rebels said on their website that they had killed 15 Russians in the past few days in the same area and claimed that federal forces have plundered the town of Argun, also east of Grozny.

In Moscow, the office of the Kremlin's spokesman for Chechnya, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, denied that Russian units had suffered casualties. There were no independent reports from the North Caucasus republic. At the border with the Russian republic of Ingushetia a build-up of about 2,000 Chechen refugees was reported.

Many were trying to return to Chechnya from overfilled refugee camps in Ingush territory where an estimated 175,000 people are still located. Almost 250,000 civilians fled Chechnya after fighting erupted in September 1999.

(la/dpa)