ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia (AP):
TWO DAYS of fierce fighting in a town close to war-ravaged Chechnya killed 12 suspected rebels and seven policemen, officials said yesterday, in the latest spate of violence that underscored spreading turmoil in Russia's troubled Caucasus region.
Police said they were acting on a tip when they hunted down the group in Tukui-Mekteb, a village in the southern Stavropol region, about 40 kilometres (25 miles) north of the border with Chechnya.
The suspected militants refused to surrender and 700 police troops yesterday surrounded two houses where the remaining rebels were holed up the day after special forces stormed another nearby house, the regional Interior Ministry said.
Seven policemen were killed and another seven wounded over the two-day clash and 12 miliported the group had probably been planning to seize a school.
SUSPECTED MERCENARIES
Russian TV channels showed troops approaching the village under cover of armoured personnel carriers, and soldiers lying on the snowy ground, training their guns on the houses where the militants were hiding.
The Interfax news agency reported that rebel snipers were continuing to fire at police Friday afternoon.
"The (police) sweep began from the park," local resident Ramazan Khaladayev told Rossiya state television, standing in the doorway of a home. "They searched me, then my neighbour, and moved on that way, where the firing started later. It lasted until three in the morning."
State-controlled Channel One television said that residents of the village were evacuated at dawn. It showed about a dozen women, some draped in blankets, walking quickly away, one carrying a baby and others leading young children by the hand.
The dead suspects were alleged mercenaries for a radical Islamic group based in Chechnya's Shelkovsky district, the Interior Ministry said.
They were suspected of a series of attacks in Chechnya, and planning similar attacks against law enforcement authorities and strategic facilities in the Stavropol region.
