Fresh violence flared up across Russia's volatile north Caucasus yesterday as troops and police sought rebels responsible for attacks on major Chechen towns.
The ITAR-TASS news agency quoted the military as saying it had begun large-scale "special operations" in Chechnya and used helicopter gunships to fire at rebel positions in the mountains. At least six servicemen have been killed. The raids followed Monday's rebel assault on Gudermes, during which chunks of Chechnya's second town fell into guerrilla hands, and an attack on another major town, Argun.
Troops used armour and artillery to flush out the attackers.
TASS quoted local police as saying the situation in both towns remained "difficult but controllable". The rebel kavkaz.org website said clashes there continued.
The daily Kommersant said that in Argun troops had blown up a disused three-storey public building to stop rebels inside firing on them. It said some 20-30 guerrillas were buried under the rubble when the building collapsed.
The upsurge in violence, which the pro-Moscow administrator, Mr Akhmad Kadyrov, has linked to US kamikaze attacks, has further dented the credibility of Moscow's public relations campaign portraying life in the region as slowly returning to normal.
In the worst attack, four Russian troops were killed and five wounded when their armoured vehicle came under fire at the border with the neighbouring region of Ingushetia, Interfax news agency quoted Ingushi police as saying.