THE HEAD of a Chechen commando unit holding some 160 hostages in southern Russia vowed last night to fight "until the last bullet" if Russia refuses to end the crisis peacefully.
One of the hostages held in the border village of Pervomaiskaya seized the Kalashnikov assault rifle of a commando and killed him but he was then killed by another rebel, Dagestan television reported.
A woman died from her injuries sustained during the cross Interfax news agency said.
The guerrillas will "fight for days if necessary, until the last bullet" if Russians "prefer not to choose a peaceful solution," commando leader, Mr Salman Raduyev, told the Russian television station NTV.
"If Russian and Dagestan authorities want to put a peaceful end to this tragedy which for us is a military action we are ready too," Mr Raduyev said. "But. . .we are ready to die here."
Late last night Mr Raduyev proposed that four prominent Russian politicians come and negotiate with them, saying he considered them "true democrats".
The four include reformist former prime minister Mr Yegor Gaidar and Mr Grigory Yavlinsky, leader of the reformist opposition party Yabloko.
The separatists' convoy was halted at Pervomayskaya, almost on Dagestan's western border with Chechnya, on Wednesday after fleeing Kizlyar, where they had seized and later released most of 2,000 civilians they had herded into a hospital on Tuesday.
Mr Raduyev said last night his commando unit wants to be escorted to the Chechen village of Novo Grozny by "foreign journalists, members of international organisations and Duma deputies." (The Duma is the lower house of the Russian parliament.)
Moves to release the hostages faltered yesterday when the Russians insisted on the release of all captives.
Earlier, comments made by President Boris Yeltsin, who was in Paris for the requiem mass for former French president Francois Mitterrand, bad seemed to strike a conciliatory note with talk of Russian troops withdrawing from Chechnya. But it became obvious chat Mr Yeltsin was taking no new initiative.