Nine Russian soldiers killed in Chechen land mine blast

NAZRAN, Russia - Nine Russian soldiers died when an armored car hit a land mine, officials said Saturday as fighters in Chechnya continued to inflict casualties despite Russian claims that the war is all but over.

The soldiers were part of a convoy returning to base after a five-day firefight near the Chechen town of Serzhen-Yurt that killed at least 13 Russian servicemen. Five servicemen were killed immediately and 11 wounded Friday when the armored car struck the mine near the town of Avtury in the central Shali district, said Sergei Yastrzhembsky, the Russian presidential spokesman for Chechnya.

Four of the wounded died later of their injuries, he said.

A spokesman for the Russian Interior Ministry said earlier that rebels ambushed the convoy after the mine exploded, and that 11 soldiers were killed and 18 were wounded in the explosion and subsequent fighting. But Gen. Gennady Troshev, the commander of Russian forces in Chechnya, said there was no ambush.

In the earlier fighting at Serzhen-Yurt, a total of 13 Russian servicemen were killed and 18 were wounded, Yastrzhembsky said. About 250 militants were fighting in the region, most of them soldiers of fortune, he said.

''At least 100 mercenaries died in the battle,'' he said. His casualty estimates could not be independently confirmed.

The military said Saturday that the fighting around Serzhen-Yurt was over and a mopping-up operation was underway. The rebels have been ''completely eliminated'' and combat units involved in the fighting were being withdrawn to their permanent bases, a military spokesman said.

But the rebels continued their hit-and-run strikes, staging a series of overnight attacks on Russian checkpoints and outposts in the towns surrounding the capital, Grozny, and in the suburbs of Gudermes, Interior Ministry officials said Saturday.

Unidentified gunmen opened fire on a police headquarters in the western town of Achkhoi-Martan on Friday night, the press center said. One officer was injured in the attack, but there were no fatalities, the spokesman said.

Troshev said that about 1,500 rebels were continuing to resist federal troops in the breakaway republic.

''Troops are carrying out several dozen operations to liquidate scattered groups of Chechen gunmen,'' Troshev said, according to the ITAR-Tass news agency.

Also Saturday, the press service of Akhmad Kadyrov, Russia's civilian administrator in Chechnya, said the return of refugees who fled the fighting in the republic is now a top priority, ITAR-Tass reported. Kadyrov's press service said he believes all refugees could be returned to their homes within two or three months, ITAR-Tass said.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said this week, however, that most of the 170,000 refugees could not return to Chechnya this winter due to the widespread devastation caused by the war. Most of them are living in the neighboring Russian region of Ingushetia.

Russian troops were driven out of Chechnya in a 1994-96 war. They returned after Chechnya-based Islamic militants raided several villages in the neighboring Russian region of Dagestan, and after about 300 people died in apartment bombings the government blames on Chechens.