The Sydney Morning Herald http://www.smh.com.au/news/9912/08/text/world1.html 40,000 trapped as military closes in Date: 08/12/99 By DAVID FILIPOV in Western Chechnya Scores of terrified refugees were reported to be fleeing the Chechen capital, Grozny, after the Russian military issued an ultimatum saying they had five days to leave the city or die, but as many as 40,000 civilians remained trapped. Many of them, too old, sick or frightened to leave, or with nowhere to go, have spent the past two months cowering, hungry and cold, in Grozny's cellars and bomb shelters. Scores of people were making their way down this narrow road from Grozny after reading the Russian warning in leaflets distributed on Monday as troops closed in on the capital, offering civilians a single ''safe corridor'' out. ''You are surrounded, all roads to Grozny are blocked. You have no chance of winning,'' leaflets dropped over the city read. Russia's migration service said that it expected 20,000 to 30,000 people to flee Grozny in the next five days. Mr Nikolai Koshman, Russia's Chechnya boss, said he believed 40,000 civilians were still there. The Russian military is considering using aerosol explosive bombs, also known as ''fuel-air'' bombs, according to Mr Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent defence analyst based in Moscow. The weapons first create a cloud of inflammable gas over a large area, which seeps into buildings, bunkers and anywhere there is a free flow of air. The gas is then ignited by a second stage of the weapon, causing a terrifying explosion which, Mr Felgenhauer said, ''destroys men and buildings in the same fashion as a leaking gas cylinder can destroy an entire city block''. Mindful of their huge losses in Moscow's failed 1994-1996 campaign to defeat the Chechen rebels, Russian commanders have pledged not to storm Grozny with ground troops. The military is apparently hoping the aerosol bombs can help dislodge the rebels from their elaborate system of underground defences in tunnels, sewers and Soviet-era bomb shelters. But aerosol bombs would certainly kill many civilians huddled in ruined buildings and shallow basements. On the highway leading west from Grozny, families came out on foot or by car, telling of a city in terror. Many people, especially the elderly and poor, remained trapped, they said. Taisa, 37, said she had offered to help her neighbour, an elderly Russian woman, to flee. ''She said she would stay behind because she was too tired to flee. 'If God wills it, we will live,' she told me. I left her all the food and water we had.'' Russia completed its encirclement of Grozny at the weekend, but a rebel spokesman, Mr Movladi Udugov, said by phone from an unknown location in southern Chechnya that there were still ''enough fighters to ensure the city's defence. All [fighters] who are there are prepared for whatever happens, and nobody plans to abandon the city.'' Federal troops claim to have provided safe escape routes for refugees, but people who have fled the war say Russian aircraft regularly strafe convoys leading into neighbouring Ingushetia. Last Friday, a refugee column was shot at by unidentified attackers. Federal spokesmen shrugged off the suggestion that they could have been Russian troops as ''disinformation''. Chechen authorities claim about 5,000 civilians have been killed in the three-month war, but the figure is impossible to confirm. Russian forces appeared to have taken control of the town of Argun, a key eastern entry point into Grozny, where they raised the Russian flag for domestic television cameras after days of intense fighting. The battles have apparently shifted to the south, to the city of Urus-Martan, which Russian forces want to control before they attempt to seize Grozny. The Boston Globe and agencies This material is subject to copyright and any unauthorised use, copying or mirroring is prohibited. ************************************************************************* This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use." -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.alexia.net.au/~www/mhutton/index.html Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
