MOSCOW (Islamweb & Agencies) - Four Russian invasion soldiers were killed in the Chechen capital Grozny on Saturday when their armored vehicle was blown up by a remote-controlled mine and then came under fire from a Resistance sniper. (Read map caption below).
RIA news agency quoted pro-Russian Chechen police as saying the armored personnel carrier had been moving through the center of the ruined city when it was blown up.
A Resistance sniper then opened fire on the vehicle from a four-story house, it said. He managed to evade capture after a 10-minute gun battle.
NTV television showed footage shot by a mine-sweeper whose unit rushed to the rescue of the invasion soldiers trapped in the personnel carrier. It showed the wrecked vehicle immobilized on a leafy deserted avenue with camouflaged people firing at a nearby building.
NTV showed invasion soldiers dragging limp bodies from the vehicle.
A bomb disposal expert speaking at the site of the attack told NTV that the mine was made from an artillery shell and was detonated by remote-control. The invaders were sitting atop the personnel carrier when it hit the mine.
A total of 12 Russian military and police had been killed in Chechnya over the last three days, NTV said.
Tass said two Russian Sukhoi-25 bombers had been fired upon from heavy machineguns on Friday on their way back from a mission in the southern mountains. It said none of the craft had been damaged.
Twenty-one months into its military campaign, Moscow has established nominal control over Chechnya but has failed to stamp out Chechen Resistance to Russian rule and its troops die almost daily in Resistance attacks.
Despite suffering losses and alienating ordinary Chechens with massive sweeps which have been condemned even by the region's pro-Moscow administration, Russia rules out negotiating a settlement with the Resistance.
Elected Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov this week made public a letter to the leaders of the G7 group of the world's wealthiest nations, asking them to put pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to start talks in Chechnya.
MAP CAPTION:
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia has struggled to overcome the legacy of Communism. Creating a democratic political system and a market economy to replace the bureaucracy and centralism of the past has proved an elusive goal, with progress hampered by the financial crisis of 1998 and war in breakaway Chechnya.