Eleven police killed in rebel attack

Eleven police officers in rebel Chechnya who were investigating the killing of two other policemen were ambushed by insurgents and shot dead, an official said today.

Two Chechen officers from the republic’s pro-Russian forces were killed on Thursday night in the Shchelkovskaya district an area in Chechnya’s northern plains that were overrun by Russian troops early in the current war and are far from the main rebel hideouts in the southern mountains.

A police unit comprising Chechen and Russian officers that was sent on Friday to investigate the killings was attacked by rebels, an official in the pro-Moscow Chechen administration said.

Eleven officers were killed, the official said.

Russian forces have began a sweep of the district in a search for the rebels, the official said.

Three other policemen were killed on Friday when a car they were inspecting exploded near the city of Gudermes, the official said.

The car had been abandoned near a filling station, and the officers were inspecting it when an explosive device inside detonated.

Two Russian servicemen were killed and several were wounded in nine separate rebel attacks on Russian positions and checkpoints over the past 24 hours, the official said.

Three other servicemen were killed and 10 wounded when their military vehicles struck land mines, he said.

Despite having controlled Chechnya for months, Russian forces have been unable to stop attacks by small bands of rebels, who bloody Moscow’s forces daily.

But attacks have been relatively rare in the northern part of the republic, where rebels’ presence is low.

Throughout Chechnya, security has been tightened, with checkpoints being reinforced and troops being put on alert because of the August anniversary of the rebels taking the capital Grozny in the first 1994-96 war in Chechnya.

Russian troops left Chechnya after a humiliating defeat in the first war.

They returned in 1999 after Chechnya-based rebels invaded a neighbouring Russian region and after apartment building bombings, which authorities blamed on the insurgents, killed more than 300 people in Russia.