Yahoo News - Tuesday February 22 3:58 PM ET
Russian Troops Accused of Massacre
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV Associated Press Writer
MOSCOW (AP) - Russian troops rampaged through a suburb of the Chechen
capital, killing at least 62 civilians in what could be the worst such
massacre in the Chechen war, an international human rights group said
Tuesday.
Interviews with survivors revealed that about 100 soldiers
systematically robbed and killed civilians in the Grozny suburb of Aldi
on Feb. 5-6, according to Human Rights Watch, a New York-based
organization.
Russian officials have vehemently denied that federal troops took
part in any atrocities against civilians.
But the group cited survivors as saying the Russian troops also
committed several rapes and hurled grenades into basements where
residents were trying to hide. The reported rampage came a few days
after most rebels fled the city, and Russian troops were moving to flush
out the holdouts.
``We are absolutely shocked by this evidence,'' said Malcolm Hawkes,
a Human Rights Watch spokesman. ``It's the worst case documented so
far.''
Hawkes said Human Rights Watch had ``convincing evidence'' of 82
deliberate murders in Aldi, of which 62 have been documented. He said
the group would release the list of victims and full details later this
week after it checks the remaining 20 cases.
Vladimir Kalamanov, appointed last week by acting President Vladimir
Putin as human rights commissioner for Chechnya, promised Tuesday to
check all allegations that civilians were being murdered, but he
refrained from discussing specific cases before making a trip to the
region.
``If the authorities abused their position, they must be punished,''
he said.
At the same time, he said he would also see that the soldiers' rights
weren't violated.
``It's important to protect civilians, but we must also protect the
rights of soldiers and officials,'' Kalamanov said. ``I can't refuse my
protection to the representatives of the federal authorities.''
The reported massacre in Aldi was the third mass killing of civilians
that Human Rights Watch claims to have documented. The previous killings
were an alleged massacre of some 40 civilians in the village of Alkhan-Yurt
in early December and an ensuing rampage in Grozny's Staropromyslovsky
region in which 41 people died.
The report of the latter violence came in early February, and the
government hotly denied it.
``While they were busy denying reports about killings in
Staropromyslovsky, an even worse massacre was occurring,'' Hawkes said.
Following the rampage in Aldi, the Russian soldiers threatened
revenge against survivors who talked about it, Hawkes said.
Reports of atrocities by Russian troops, coming on top of the
indiscriminate shelling of cities and villages, have drawn strong
international protests.
The military has continued to claim that heavy bombings and shellings
have spared civilians, despite abundant evidence to the contrary.
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