MOSCOW, October 29 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Chechen independence fighters downed Tuesday, October 29, a Russian helicopter near Grozny, killing 4 people, an official with the Russian forces in Chechnya said, as quoted by Interfax.

The MI-8 helicopter was shot down by an anti-aircraft missile near the Russian forces headquarters in Chechnya, just east of the capital Grozny, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

The incident occurred three days after the dramatic end of a hostage-taking carried out by Chechen commandos in a Moscow theatre, which left 118 captives dead, including 117 who died from the effects of a strong gas pumped into the theatre by Russian forces before storing the building. Fifty hostage-takers were also killed.

Chechen fighters last August shot down a Russian MI-26 military helicopter near the Russian headquarters in Chechnya, killing 121 Russian soldiers.

Chechens in Russia are being increasingly harassed by Russian police in the wake of last week’s hostage standoff, the Russian parliament's only Chechen representative said Tuesday.

“Despite (President Vladimir) Putin’s warnings, the repression of Chechens has begun,” said Aslanbek Aslakhanov, Chechnya's elected representative to the State Duma, or lower house of parliament.

Aslakhanov said Russian police, on heightened security alert since the hostage-taking, were the main perpetrators of anti-Chechen sentiment.

“They trap them by putting drugs or weapons in their belongings so they can detain them,” he told journalists.

“At police stations, they’re forced to give their fingerprints - that’s illegal.”

“We’ve received lots of phone calls, letters and telegrams about abuse from all over Russia,” said Aslakhanov, who was elected to the Duma in August 2000.

Aslakhanov’s office said it received 500 complaints on Monday alone.

“We’re going to send the telegrams to the president, to the security services and to the interior ministry so that they put an end to the hysteria of police officers who are spreading inter-ethnic hate through their behavior,” he said.

Aslakhanov hinted that the police behavior might by officially approved.

“I don’t think there’s a written order on the subject, but I think the police hierarchy knows about this illegal behavior and are covering it up,” he warned.

Meanwhile, Russia stepped up its war on Chechen fighters Tuesday after President Putin ordered the military to draw up new so-called “anti-terror” plans in the wake of last week’s hostage drama.

Police arrested dozens of people suspected of involvement in the three-day stand-off.

Officials said that 41 of the Chechen hostage-takers had been shot dead during the rescue operation.

Many of them were unconscious at the time from the effects of the gas, according to members of the special forces who led the assault.

Health officials had said earlier that all but two of the 117 hostages died from the effects of the incapacitating gas used to stun the hostage-takers.

A member of the special forces told Kommersant newspaper that the Russians had shot dead those Chechens who had explosives strapped to their bodies even though they were already knocked-out by the gas to avoid them triggering their human bombs.

“They shot all those who had explosives because people could still come to or have convulsions. To avoid anyone setting off the explosives we took extra measures,” the unnamed elite commando said.

The Chechen fighters had threatened to blow up the theater and kill all the hostages if Russia did not end its war in the Chechen republic.

Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov said several dozen people believed to have participated in the theater siege had been arrested.

A Chechen lawmaker complained Tuesday that Chechens in the Russian capital were being harassed, searched and taken in for photos and fingerprinting.

Putin vowed Monday, October 28, that Russia would take bold action against “terrorists wherever they may be,” but the crisis has renewed international pressure on Moscow to seek a political solution in tiny breakaway Chechnya.

The Russian leader vaulted to power more than two years ago with a pledge to crack down on Chechnya, where independence fighters have battled Russian occupation in two separate wars.

The north Caucasus republic enjoyed de facto independence after the first 1994-96 war but Russia launched a massive anti-insurgency campaign in the southern republic in October 1999.

Russia has ruled out all talks with Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov, who said Monday that more attacks like the Moscow hostage taking were inevitable unless Putin sought a peace settlement. He firmly denied any involvement in the attack on the Russian capital, however.

“You will never be able to crush the Chechen people and bring it to its knees.

“There is one reasonable, correct step - to sit down at the negotiating table,” Maskhadov told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location in Chechnya.

The remarks came as a world congress of Chechens was being held in Denmark, which infuriated Moscow so soon after the hostage crisis.

European nations have stepped up the pressure on Putin to stop waging its deadly military campaign in Chechnya. "We know they don't have a military solution. Therefore they have to have some kind of political solution," E.U. foreign policy representative Javier Solana said Monday.

But Putin insisted: "Russia will retaliate with appropriate measures against terrorists and their ideological and financial backing wherever they may be."

“Russia will never make any deals with terrorists and will never give in to blackmail,” he said in televised remarks Monday.

Meanwhile Russia maintained a wall of silence around the nature of the gas its troops pumped into the Moscow theater.

A top medical official said “sarin or other poison gases” were not used but rather an “anesthetizing gas used in surgery.”

U.S. officials said they were told by Moscow that an opiate-based substance was used.

A U.S. national may be among the dead from the hostage rescue operation but positive identification has yet to be made, a U.S. embassy spokesman in the Russian capital said.

A total of 333 survivors of the Moscow hostage drama were released from hospitals by Tuesday morning, health officials said as quoted by the ITAR-TASS news agency.

According to hospital officials, 311 people remain in medical care but some of them, including nine children, could be released Tuesday or Wednesday.