MOSCOW (Islamweb & News Agencies) - Two pro-Russian administrators were reported Sunday to have been shot dead in Chechnya in a Resistance campaign to deter Chechens from working with Moscow and Resistance sources said they had launched fresh attacks across the region.
Russian news agencies quoted the military as saying Russian troops in the separatist province had come under fire 11 times over the last 24 hours.(Read photo caption below) It claimed that six Resistance men had been killed and another 11 captured.
A Resistance spokesman said the Resistance had killed no fewer than 150 Russian troops Sunday in attacks across the territory. Moscow says it has lost in all around 3,000 servicemen since the conflict began some 20 months ago.
Interfax news agency quoted prosecutors investigating the assassination of Isa Batukayev, chief administrator in the Pobedinskoye village outside the capital Grozny, as saying he and his brother were returning home late Saturday when their car was stopped.
The prosecutors said two men had forced Batukayev out and shot him on the spot but did not touch his brother, Interfax said.
No reasons for the killing were given but the attack seemed to be part of a months-long Resistance campaign to dissuade Chechens ready to embrace Moscow's cause from cooperating with the ``occupying force.''
Resistance spokesman Movladi Udugov, speaking from an undisclosed location, said a Resistance death squad had also executed Sunday a deputy mayor of the town on Shali, southeast of Grozny.
He said the official had been gunned down in broad daylight in the center of Shali by Resistance men who shot him while explaining to passers-by that the man was a ``traitor to the nation'' and had been sentenced to death by a sharia court.
Udugov said Resistance units had launched massive attacks on Russians across Chechnya, including an assault on some 600 troops entrenched in the town of Vedeno, southeast of Grozny.
He said Russians were using bombers and multiple rocket launchers to beat off the attack on their contingent in Vedeno but bombs were often falling on their own positions.
Russia has established shaky control over Chechnya but has grave problems stamping out armed insurgency. Servicemen die almost daily from Resistance attacks which undermine the credibility of official reports that life is returning to normal.
PHOTO CAPTION:
Russian troops can never relax in Chechnya; not even in the capital Grozny. The Russian army's battle against Chechen rebel fighters has been a stalemate for more than a year. (BBC)