From: "chierico navigante" <mostraccio@clubnautilus.net>

Sunday Times 7/10

Moscow accused of killing refugees
FROM ALICE LAGNADO IN MOSCOW

FORTY-EIGHT Chechens were killed in three attacks by Russian soldiers over a
24-hour period this week, Chechen officials said yesterday in the bloodiest
report of civilian deaths at the hands of Russian forces since the beginning
of the conflict.
Twenty-eight of the dead were refugees killed as Russian tanks fired on a
convoy of four buses that were taking them back to their homes in the
village of Shelkovskoye in northern Chechnya. Nine more people were badly
injured, the officials told the AFP news agency.

Twelve other Chechens were killed in an air raid on Tuesday night on the
village of Koshkeldy, near the republic's eastern border with Dagestan.
Thirty civilians were wounded in that attack.

Meanwhile, Grad multiple-rocket strikes killed eight people and injured 11
more in the northwestern Znamenskoye region. The Russian military has not
confirmed the report.

The attacks came as refugees leaving Chechnya told reporters that Russian
troops were bombing their homeland indiscriminately. The Russian Emergencies
Ministry said that more than 120,000 people had left Chechnya by yesterday
morning.

General Anatoli Kvashnin, the hardline chief of the Russian armed forces,
said yesterday that his troops would avoid harming civilians. "On the one
hand, we must stop outrages by the terrorists and, on the other, prevent
casualties among local civilians and the penetration of bandits into the
districts controlled by the troops," he said.

Vladimir Rushailo, the Interior Minister, said: "We do not identify the
terrorists with the Chechen people. Therefore, one of our tasks is to act
correctly and to prevent the Chechen people from the outrages of the
terrorists."

Russian forces continued to mass on the northern banks of the Terek River
yesterday, slightly more than 12 miles from Grozny, amid claims that they
had taken control of the northern third of the country. The Terek runs
across northern Chechnya and is effectively a frontier between the plains of
the north and the hilly south.

Russian forces could stop at the Terek, from where it should be relatively
easy to defend the plains. Some observers believe that the Russian
authorities will set up a separate state in northern Chechnya while southern
Chechnya descends into even greater poverty. But Igor Sergeyev, the Russian
Defence Minister, would not even say whether troops would cross the river
towards the capital. "Everything will depend on how things work out in the
future," he said.

President Maskhadov declared martial law yesterday, calling on all
able-bodied Chechens to defend their homes against Russian troops.