CHECHNYA: Separatist rebels killed 16 Russian servicemen in a weekend of bloody clashes in Chechnya, while Moscow's troops claimed to have shot dead a leading guerrilla in charge of training women suicide bombers.
Rebels blew up a heavy truck carrying Russian soldiers through mountainous southern Chechnya on Saturday, and then attacked the wrecked vehicle with guns and grenades, killing nine soldiers.
Some of the soldiers were killed when the mine exploded under the vehicle and others were shot dead in the ensuing ambush.
Seven more servicemen were killed in other ambushes and bomb attacks across a region that the Kremlin claims to have all but pacified after two wars with rebels since 1994.
Separatist forces have stepped up their attacks since denouncing a controversial March referendum that Moscow says proved Chechens' desire to remain part of the Russian Federation.
Suicide bombers, several of them women, have killed about 100 people in and around Chechnya in the last two months.
Two women blew themselves up at a Moscow concert last weekend, killing themselves and 13 others.
A bomb-disposal expert also died last week, while trying to defuse explosives allegedly left by a Chechen woman outside a restaurant in the centre of the capital.
Russian forces said they killed one of the organisers of the women suicide squads, Aslan Gasayev, along with three of his bodyguards, in a special operation on Saturday.
The Kremlin says rebels' increasing use of suicide attacks points to the growing influence of Islamic extremism in Chechnya, and says the guerrillas are funded by international terrorist groups. Many Chechens say the brutality of Russian forces in the region has driven its men and women to employ desperate methods to win independence.
Since April more than 100 servicemen and civilians have died in suicide attacks blamed on Chechen rebels.
President Vladimir Putin refuses to talk to rebel leaders as part of his peace plan for Chechnya, but has promised an amnesty to some guerrillas who lay down their arms and pledged to give a large degree of autonomy to the mostly Muslim republic.
The Council of Europe's new rapporteur for Chechnya, Mr Andreas Gross, urged Mr Putin yesterday to talk to Mr Aslan Maskhadov, the man elected Chechen president in 1997 but since denounced by Russia as a terrorist.
Elections for a new Chechen president are due on October 5th, but Mr Putin refuses to countenance the idea of Mr Maskhadov running for the post.
"The political process launched by Moscow must be broadened and deepened to take in Maskhadov's forces," said Mr Gross at the end of a three-day visit to Moscow.
"They must be included as representatives of the old legitimacy."
Mr Gross said he had talked to Mr Maskhadov's representative in Moscow, and received assurances that the fugitive leader had broken ties with active guerrillas, accepted the framework of the Russian constitution and was willing to discuss autonomy for Chechnya rather than outright independence.
Mr Maskhadov has been on the run since Russian troops returned to Chechnya in 1999, when Mr Putin vowed to crush the rebels who beat Moscow in a 1994-96 war.
