The remaining civilian population of Grozny took refuge in cellars yesterday after a day of heavy fighting around the Chechen capital as Russia said it was mounting a special operation to "liberate" the city.
The senior Russian commander, Gen Alexander Baranov, said from his base in Mozdok, North Ossetia, that plans were being put into force to seize the capital of the breakaway republic, where estimates of the number of remaining residents vary between 20,000 and 40,000. "The city will be liberated, a special operation will be organized by police forces with the support of federal troops," Gen Baranov was quoted as saying by Russian ORT public television. He added that pro-Russian Chechen units would participate.
A senior Chechen official Mr Movladi Udugov said federal government forces were continuing efforts to advance toward central Grozny from positions in the eastern suburb of Khankala. Russian troops were also seeking to push forward from the Starop romyslovsky district in western Grozny and north from the Sheikh Mansur airport, five kilomet res from the city centre, he said.
Meanwhile, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin dismissed as "totally absurd" reports from Chechen and Russian sources that a Russian reconnaissance patrol suffered heavy losses after being attacked in Grozny on Wednesday.
Mr Putin told the private Russian NTV channel the reports were "a provocation designed to sow dissent among Russian soldiers."
Reports from three different sources said a Russian armoured patrol was ambushed inside Grozny by about 1,000 Chechen separatists armed with rocket-propelled grenades.
Chechen officials said between 300 and 350 soldiers were killed, while journalists said they had counted around 100 bodies.
Anonymous Russian military sources, quoted by the military news agency AVN, put the number of dead at about 50.
The surge in fighting came as Mr Knut Vollebaek, head of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, returned from a fact-finding trip to Chechnya and demanded Russia give in to Western demands to let the international security body play a role in ending the war.
He said he would brief G8 foreign ministers meeting in Berlin today. Many people were trapped in the capital and unable to escape and a humanitarian escape corridor set up on December 6th by Russian forces to allow people to flee the fighting was ineffective. Many are unaware of the humanitarian corridor, while others have been scared into staying underground.
Russia's Emergencies Minister Mr Sergei Shoigu said there would be no peace agreement on Chechnya similar to the 1996 Khasavyurt, Dagestan, accord, which ended the last 21-month Chechen conflict, but failed to tie down the republic's status.