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Russian Troops Kill 11 Chechen Fighters, Kidnap Six: Report
MOSCOW, Aug 27 (News Agencies) - Russia claimed Monday that eleven Chechen combatants were killed and six taken prisoner as federal forces launched a "special operation" against resistance forces based in Vedeno - in southeastern Chechnya, local authorities were quoted by ITAR-TASS as saying.
There was no independent confirmation of the report.
According to Chechens, Vedeno has been the scene of regular fighting over the past few days, Agence France-Presse said.
Russian authorities have denied the resumption of fighting in the region, saying that only minor fire had been exchanged.
Earlier Monday, a Russian policeman was killed and twelve were injured in Grozny as the coach they were riding in was shot, Interfax news agency quoted the city's Russian military authorities as saying.
All the casualties aboard the passenger bus were policemen, the agency said, giving no further details about the attack.
On Sunday, four Russian policemen were killed and two others were injured when their vehicle was blown up by a remote-controlled bomb in the Chechen capital Grozny, army commanders in the city were quoted as saying by the RIA Novosti news agency.
The incidents came as separatist fighters launched a wave of attacks on federal positions over the weekend, in which they claimed to have killed more than 40 Russian troops and pro-Moscow police; the Kremlin denied Sunday that it had suffered any losses.
The Chechen combatants fired automatic weapons and mortars at the town hall in Grozny and at the military headquarters in the southeastern Vedeno region, the Russian general staff in the North Caucasus region said, giving no indication of casualties.
Russian military officials said they had killed more than 40 separatists over the past week, most of them in the Vedeno region, and admitted to coming under attack 117 times.
The Chechen fighters claimed on the news website, Kavkaz Center, that fighters under the command of separatist leader Shamil Basayev controlled several localities in the region, though the Kremlin denied the report.
Both sides in the Chechen conflict regularly inflate the number of losses of their adversaries while playing down their own losses.
Chechen combatants have stepped up their attacks in the mountainous southeast and northern regions of the republic in recent weeks. The attacks continue to take their toll on the supposedly fully Russian-controlled regions two years after federal forces entered the republic to put down a separatist movement.
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