Chechen fighters freed six prisoners of war after the intervention of a group of Russian mothers who are in Chechnya's capital to look for their soldier sons, the women said Friday.
The young soldiers were evacuated Thursday night after Chechen fighters led the women from Grozny, where they had been trapped by a Russian artillery assault on the bombed out city.Russia has unleashed its firepower on Grozny in recent weeks to quash Chechnya's independence drive. Some of the 40 women described Thursday's bombardment as terrifying, with several convinced the Russian soldiers had been ordered to fire on them.
"Russian soldiers bombed Russian mothers," said one, Vera Ivanova, who still has no word on her 20-year-old son's fate.
Three of the mothers, all nurses, stayed behind to treat the wounded in Grozny, the women said.
In Moscow, a radio station reported that Chechen leader Dzhokhar Dudayev was trying to make contact with Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin in an attempt to end the fighting in the southern republic.
The Echo Moscow radio station quoted Dudayev aide Movladi Udugov as saying Chernomyrdin was the most reasonable figure in the Russian government.
Previous attempts to hold talks to end the fighting have failed.
Russian artillery shells rained down on the southern fringe of the Chechen capital Thursday in one of the heaviest bombardments in the six-week-old war. The Russians also shelled and rocketed surrounding villages, igniting a huge fire in an oil storage terminal a few miles south of the city.
The soldiers' mothers arrived in the besieged city earlier this week looking for information about their sons.