MOSCOW, August 20 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - At least nine Russian soldiers were killed and 16 others injured in two separate incidents in the war-ravaged Caucasian republic of Chechnya on Wednesday, August 20.

Six Russian soldiers were killed in southern Chechnya Wednesday morning after their military vehicle hit a landmine in Dyshne village in the southern province of Vedeno, reported the Russian Channel 5.

It quoted a spokesman for the Russian forces in Chechnya as saying the blast also wounded 11 Russian soldiers who were en route to a military base in the province.

In a separate incident, a number of Chechen fighters, led by Arab commander Abu el-Waleed, attacked a police station in a southern village and battled with Russian federal forces and pro-Moscow Chechen administration forces, said the Russian Channel 2.

In the ensuing heavy four-hour shootout, three Russian soldiers were killed and five others injured, a Chechen Interior Ministry spokesman was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying.

The battled also claimed the lives of six Chechen fighters whose bodies, he said , adding that a member of the pro-Moscow Chechen presidential guard unit was taken hostage by the independence seekers.

The Russian soldiers laid siege to the area, but were inflicted with heavy casualties after Chechen fighters managed to sneak out and destroy an armored vehicle by a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG), according to the spokesman.

The official Chechen news agency Chechen Press, however, put at 17 the number of Russian soldiers killed in the fighting.

It quoted eyewitnesses as saying that two armored vehicles were destroyed and only Chechens killed.

In another development, pro-Moscow Chechen government officials admitted that nearly 270 people had been abducted in the country in the first half of 2003, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

First Deputy Prime Minister Movsar Khamidov said both Russian troops and Chechen fighters were guilty of the kidnappings - a rare statement by such a senior pro-Moscow official in the republic.

"A total of 267 people were abducted in the first half of 2003," Interfax quoted Khamidov as saying.

He added that only five of those cases had been solved and expressed little hope that Chechen law enforcement officials would improve their record any time soon.

"We are still seriously concerned about the abductions," Khamidov said.

"Law enforcement agencies have not been doing enough to solve these crimes."

The figures show that crime in Chechnya is continuing at just about the same pace as last year even though Russian President Vladimir Putin has pronounced on several occasions that the war was over and won.

Human rights groups accuse federal troops of committing atrocities in Chechnya, as many of the men the Russians detain on suspicion of assisting independence seekers are never heard from again or are found dead with torture marks on their bodies.

Meanwhile, Putin's commissioner on human rights in Chechnya promised Tuesday to soon release an exhaustive list of civilians who went missing or perished in the war. No such statistics have ever been published.