Buses carrying Chechen gunmen and as many as 150 human shields rolled into Chechnya Tuesday after waiting several hours near the border for Russian guarantees of safety.
The buses entered the rebel republic more than 24 hours after leaving Budyonnovsk, the southern city where the gunmen had taken about 2,000 people hostage last Wednesday to demand an end to the war in Chechnya.They released most of the hostages Monday in return for a guarantee of safe passage to Chechnya and a halt to military operations there.
The Chechens, hoping to fade into rebel-controlled territory, sent scout cars ahead of the convoy into Chechnya and apparently did not like what they saw. They stopped their convoy before reaching the border and demanded new promises of safe passage, said Vladimir Vasilyev of the Interior Ministry in Moscow.
The ITAR-Tass news agency said the Russian government made those promises, but the government would not confirm the report.
The buses entered the Chechen town of Zandak Tuesday evening, and the rebels said they would release their "volunteer" hostages there, the ITAR-Tass and Interfax news agencies said. Zandak is about 15 miles east of Vedeno, a town in the rebel-controlled mountains.
Interior Ministry officials have said their troops were monitoring the column and would prevent the rebels from escaping.
A crowd of 13,000 mainly sympathetic residents of the town of Khasavyurt, in Dagestan near the Chechen border, surrounded the red-and-white buses as they waited, Interfax said, quoting the Federal Security Service. Russian armored vehicles also stood by, and military helicopters flew overhead, ITAR-Tass reported.
The buses were accompanied by a refrigerator truck that carried the bodies of rebels killed in the six-day siege in Budyonnovsk.
In past hostage incidents, Russian authorities have capitulated to terrorists' demands only to attack them later.
The gunmen had held up to 2,000 people hostage in a hospital the southern city of Budyonnovsk, demanding an end to Russia's war against their separatist republic. About 100 people died when the Chechens stormed the city last Wednesday, and dozens more were killed or wounded Saturday as Russian troops tried to free the hostages.
The Chechens released most of the hostages Monday after Chernomyrdin agreed in nationally televised negotiations to declare a cease-fire in Chechnya, resume peace talks and give the gunmen safe passage home.
The buses pulled out of Budyonnovsk with at least 73 Chechen rebels and 114 civilians who agreed to accompany them, regional officials said. News reports put the number of volunteers at about 150.
Police suggested the volunteers - who included local officials, journalists, parliament members and others - had boarded at their own risk.
After the gunmen left the hospital, hundreds of hostages emerged to waiting crowds of relatives and friends. Amid tearful reunions, loud arguments broke out among some former hostages who were sym-pathetic to the Chechens and other residents angered by the Chechens' actions.
"The Chechens treated us well," said 33-year-old pediatrician Natalya Sere-bry-akova, who emerged from the hospital in a torn and dirty white smock.
"If the Chechens promised something, they did it. When (the Russians) started to fire shells . . . into a maternity ward, the Chechens jumped on the bed and covered infants with their own bodies."
About 50 bodies of civilians were inside the hospital, local officials said Monday.Troops found and defused three mines, ITAR-Tass said.
Chechnya is about 90 miles by air from Budyonnovsk. But the convoy was stopped by troops at the border of North Ossetia, which borders Chechnya, and told to take a longer, 120-mile route through the Russian republic of Dagestan, ITAR-Tass said. The buses then doubled back, reaching Dagestan after nine hours on winding backcountry roads.
Chernomyrdin met in the Kremlin with President Boris Yeltsin today to discuss the crisis.
In the Chechen capital, Grozny, peace talks agreed to during the standoff resumed Tuesday between a high-level Russian delegation and a group sent by Chechen President Dzhokhar Dudayev. Vyacheslav Mik-hailov, Russia's first deputy minister on ethnic affairs, told ITAR-Tass that the first day of talks Monday went well.
The hostage-taking was the first major rebel attack outside of Chechnya.