Mass Killings Reported In Chechnya
Farhan Siddiqui
MOSCOW, Dec 21, 1999 -- (Reuters) The British Broadcasting Corporation
quoted villagers, including a pro-Russian Chechen leader, as saying on
Monday that Russian troops had killed 41 civilians in a rampage through
a village near Grozny.
Russia strongly denied the report.
"This is nonsense and an information provocation," a Defense Ministry
spokesman told Reuters by telephone. "Troops are not fighting peaceful
population."
BBC correspondent Paul Wood said he had been told of the killings by
Malik Saidulayev, a Chechen businessman known as a leader of factions
supporting Russia against separatist guerrillas, in an interview in the
village of Alkhan-Yurt.
The BBC quoted Saidulayev as saying that several residents had given
similar accounts of the killings, although he had seen no physical
evidence.
"They didn't just kill the people. They killed livestock as well.
Everything that was alive," the BBC quoted Saidulayev as saying.
Wood "was told by local people that Russian troops threw grenades into
cellars knowing that civilians were sheltering there," the BBC Internet
website said.
"The witnesses said that soldiers rampaged through the village stealing
and killing people who got in their way or just because they felt like
it," added the website.
It quoted Saidulayev as saying he and his bodyguards had detained the
Russian colonel and his deputy whose men had carried out the attacks
and handed them over to Russian authorities.
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