960417

Chechen rebels ambush Russian convoy, kill 26

MOSCOW: Chechen rebels ambushed a Russian convoy, killing 26 servicemen and wounding 51, Interfax news agency said on Wednesday, quoting a Russian military spokesman in the separatist region.

The spokesman told Interfax the rebels attacked the convoy of 27 tanks, armoured vehicles and cars with grenade launchers and mortars in the region of Shatoi, about 50 km (30 miles) south of the capital Grozny.

He did not say when the attack took place.

Reports of heavy casualties -- two Russian servicemen were also killed and 11 hurt in clashes in the south of the region -- could undermine President Boris Yeltsin's attempts to launch peace talks ahead of Russia's June 16 presidential election.

More than 30,000 people have died since Yeltsin sent troops into Chechnya in December 1994 to quell an independence bid.

Yeltsin, speaking in the southern Russian town of Budennovsk where over 100 people were killed in a Chechen hostage-taking raid last June, accused rebel leader Dzhokhar Dudayev of disrupting all previous peace efforts.

Yeltsin did not mention the ambush. In televised remarks he said the conflict could not be resolved by force alone or simply through peace talks.

Itar-Tass news agency quoted him as saying Chechnya was "a centre of international terrorism". Yeltsin used the same charge to justify his decision to send troops there.

In a separate incident Interfax said an aircraft dropped a bomb on a hostel for construction workers near the rebel region of Chechnya, killing a guard and wounding eight workers, including six from Yugoslavia.

It said the incident took place on Tuesday in the ethnic region of Ingushetia which borders Chechnya. Belgrade's embassy in Moscow could not immediately confirm the report.

Interfax said the workers were in Ingushetia to build a brick plant. It quoted witnesses as saying they heard the sound of a plane shortly before the bomb hit the ground.

A spokesman for the Ingush government said by telephone there had been two blasts and it was not immediately clear if they were caused by bombs or rockets. He said one policeman had been killed and one wounded along with five workers.

The spokesman declined to say whether there were foreigners among the wounded.-Reuter