Thick, black smoke billowed over the foothills north and south of the Chechen capital Wednesday after oil storage facilities were set ablaze in fighting, a news agency reported.
Russian military officials blamed the fires on Chechen rebels, but residents told ITAR-Tass that the blazes broke out as a result of chaotic shelling around Grozny by Russian forces.Fires were burning at an oil dump near a ruined cement plant south of Grozny and at an oil reservoir on the Sunzha mountain range to the north.
Russia sent more than 40,000 soldiers into the southern republic in December to crush its 3-year-old drive for independence. Thousands of civilians have been killed, and Grozny has been left largely in ruins.
Elsewhere in Chechnya on Wednesday, Russian commanders said warplanes and artillery attacked rebel positions in the south, the Interfax news agency reported.
They said artillery fire destroyed a Chechen lookout position, an anti-tank mortar unit and seven trucks near the rebel stronghold of Bamut, about 20 miles southeast of Grozny.