Street battles rage in Grozny

NAZRAN, Russia, Jan 19: Bitter street battles raged across Grozny as Russian troops pressed on Wednesday with a determined drive to seize the city, but Chechen officials denied federal troops had broken into central districts of the capital, reports AFP.

A relentless aerial and artillery bombardment by federal forces left a pall of smoke rising over downtown areas of Grozny, Chechen officials conceding heavy losses in the past 24 hours as the Russian onslaught took its toll.

The surge in fighting came as a Council of Europe delegation, which has called for a halt to the war, was to fly to neighbouring Ingushetia after visiting another Russian republic, Dagestan, on Tuesday.

Ground-attack warplanes screeched through the skies over Grozny as tank and howitzer shells slammed into the shattered city, which increasingly resembles the battered ruins of wartime Europe.

Federal warplanes flew some 180 sorties in the preceding 24 hours, the military news agency AVN said quoting Russian military headquarters.

Ferocious battles meanwhile raged near Minutka Square in the southeastern portion of central Grozny, Russian military officials said.

Infantry units were advancing from the eastern Khankala district, Staropromyslovsky in the northwest and Staraya Sunzha in the northeast, where a key bridge was taken Tuesday.

Battle lines are fluid, say Russian officials, Chechen guerrillas using a large number of snipers rather than defending a fixed frontline.

Said-Selim Abdulmuslimov, a spokesman for the Chechen presidency, told AFP the tactic was a deliberate ploy by rebel forces to draw the Russians into city, cut off advancing armour and destroy it.

"There are no Russian units in the centre of Grozny, particularly in Minutka Square," Abdulmuslimov said by telephone from Chechnya, contradicting Russian claims.

However, he conceded fierce fighting was ongoing in the eastern Mikrorayon district where Chechen guerrillas on Tuesday battled militiamen from pro-Moscow Chechen leader Bislan Gantimirov.

"In the last 24 hours we have lost 20 men and 25 wounded," Abdulmuslimov said, one of the highest daily tolls yet admitted by the rebels. He claimed some 300 Russians had been killed in the fighting.

Moscow, meanwhile, said 150 Chechen fighters had died in the fierce battles for Grozny, but it did not specify over what time period.

In the southern mountains meantime, Russian jets bombed the Argun Gorge, a key rebel supply route, and ferocious battles were being waged around Duba-Yurt for control of key heights, Chechen and Russian officials said.

The Vedeno area, the stronghold of feared warlord Shamil Basayev, again came under attack.

As Chechnya was consumed by the flames of war, the neighbouring Russian republic of Ingushetia was to play host to a Council of Europe delegation which Monday called for a ceasefire and political negotiations to end the 15-week-old conflict.

Council head David Russell-Johnston on Tuesday met with local leaders in Dagestan, on Chechnya's eastern border, who blamed the Grozny leadership for the current war, the second to ravage the republic in three years.

"There were people, understandably angry at what had happened, who said that the Chechens should be eliminated," Russell-Johnston said.

The British peer nevertheless expressed the view that "innocent civilians have been involved to a greater extent than they should have been," though he said Russia was right to seek to confront terrorism.

Moscow has portrayed its crackdown in Chechnya as an anti-terrorist drive, and rejected calls for international mediation in the conflict.

On Wednesday Russell-Johnston and his team were due to go to Ingushetia, where the bulk of the estimated 200,000 refugees from the fighting in Chechnya have fled.