-Caveat Lector- WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a prelude to war! Babies killed as Russians shell Grozny hospital By Marcus Warren in Mozdok RUSSIAN forces closed in on the Chechen capital yesterday, pounding the centre of Grozny with rockets and heavy artillery which killed at least 45 civilians, including women and babies in a maternity ward. A correspondent for the French news agency AFP counted at least 27 bodies after a rocket attack on the hospital, about 25 yards from the Chechen presidential palace on Grozny's central Liberty Square. Five Russian rockets crashed into the city centre at around 6.15pm, witnesses said. A further 17 people were killed when another rocket struck a nearby market. A bus driver died when a further rocket hit an unoccupied building. Earlier the Russians had claimed that 10 people had died when the presidential palace was hit during a shelling attack. The Chechen President, Aslan Maskhadov, was not in the palace at the time. Senior Russian officials were at pains to deny that an all-out assault was imminent, but Anatoly Kvashnin, the Russian chief of staff, admitted to the private NTV television station that Russia had poured 90,000 troops into Chechnya. This is three times the number of Russian soldiers deployed during the previous war, in 1994-1996. A correspondent for the Russian commercial television station, speaking from a military base in the southern town of Mozdok, reported battles between Russian and Chechen forces in the village of Tolstoy-Yurt, nine miles north of Grozny. He quoted Viktor Kazanstev, the North Caucasus forces chief, as saying that the ring around Grozny would be gradually tightened. Meanwhile, Igor Sergeyev, the Defence Minister, asked journalists: "Why do you keep bringing up Grozny? Who is going to storm it?" Grozny might be attacked, but only if it helped to achieve the larger goal of eliminating Chechen militants, he said. With Russian soldiers expanding their "security zone" up to the city limits, someone will have to decide whether to attempt to take it and risk a repeat of the bloodbath that accompanied its 1994 storming or hold fire and lay siege to Grozny . **COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for nonprofit research and educational purposes only.[Ref. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ] DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
