ACHKHOI-MARTAN, Russia -- The Russian military claimed Thursday to control the key Chechen town of Urus-Martan after weeks of fierce fighting but said its forces were still bombarding rebel fighters in the town.
Russian forces also pummeled targets in the capital, Grozny, and to the southeast, in Shali and Serzhen Yurt, the Russian military command said. Helicopter gunships fired on rebel positions four miles from the Grozny airport Thursday, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.A Russian victory in Urus-Martan, 12 miles southwest of Grozny, would close off a key approach to the capital and further hamper rebel supply lines.
However, Russian forces have claimed to seize rebel strongholds before, only to later admit that the insurgents still held them. Russian military headquarters said Thursday that its forces were still pounding parts of Urus-Martan with bombs and mortars.
A top military official reiterated that Russian forces would not storm Grozny in spite of the military's ultimatum to Grozny residents to leave the city by Saturday to avoid devastating bombardment.
"The city will not be taken in the direct meaning of this word," Col. Gen. Valery Manilov, first deputy chief of the Russian Army General Staff, said on Russia's ORT television. He added that "no linear operations will be carried out," apparently meaning that there would not be a ground assault.
Still, the Russian army appeared to be tightening the noose around Grozny, where an estimated 6,000 militants and from 15,000 to 40,000 civilians are holed up. Many of the noncombatants are too ill or infirm to move.
The Russian military gave no precise time for when the ultimatum expires on Saturday or when the threatened bombardment would begin. The city has been under regular, often massive air and artillery attack for weeks, and residents cannot safely leave bunkers even if they want to flee the city because the attacks have been unpredictable.
Also, there is almost no transportation in and out of the city, and residents would have to walk for up to 13 miles to pass through the Russian lines and frequent artillery barrages to reach safety.
The Russian military command claimed 80 rebels were killed in Wednesday's battle for Urus-Martan, scene of some of the bloodiest combat since fighting began in September. One Russian soldier was killed and three were wounded, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
In all, 261 Russian soldiers have been killed and 709 wounded since the fighting in Chechnya began in early September, Manilov said. The figure did not include losses for Interior Ministry units, which are also heavily engaged in the fighting.
Up to 1,000 Chechen fighters were believed to be concentrated in Shali in southern Chechnya until last week, the military said, but elders in the town claim they had all left by now, the Interfax news agency reported.
However, Col. Gennady Alyokhin, a Russian military spokesman, said most of Chechen field commander Shamil Basayev's men were in Shali, hiding in shelters and basements of ruined houses on the town's southeastern outskirts. Shali is one of the rebels' biggest strongholds.
Basayev and Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov remained in Grozny, Alyokhin said. He said that Maskhadov had announced over Chechen television that he had ordered the rebels to retreat from villages to avoid destruction by Russian forces, and that they should carry on the battle for Chechnya from the southern mountains.
Russian officials continued to reject western criticism of the military's warning to Grozny residents to leave by Saturday. They later said the ultimatum had been aimed at militants -- not civilians -- but they gave no sign of backing off from the deadline.
A Foreign Ministry statement released today said Foreign Minister "Igor Ivanov has made a point of the fact that certain forces in the West are artificially fanning tensions, distorting facts and misrepresenting the actual situation."
Turning their backs on western criticism, Ivanov and President Boris Yeltsin today won a reiteration of China's support for the Chechen campaign.
"The Chinese side understands and supports the efforts made by Russia in safeguarding national unity and territorial integrity," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said on the first day of Yeltsin's trip to Beijing. "We have also taken note of the fact that in their action in Chechnya, the Russian side has tried to avoid civilian losses."
But the European Union is considering taking action against Russia to protest its military campaign in Chechnya, Finnish Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen said today.
Lipponen, who is hosting an EU summit Friday, did not spell out what measures the trade bloc would take to get Russia to end its air raids and bombing assaults against the rebel republic.
Moscow says its campaign in Chechnya is aimed at Islamic militants who invaded a neighboring Russian republic and are blamed for apartment bombings that killed 300 people.