MAKHACHKALA, Russia (AP) -- Leaving police in charge, Russian troops began pulling out of a region in Dagestan Tuesday after saying they had ousted Islamic militants who had occupied it for a year.
Paramilitary police units continued searching houses Tuesday for rebels, mines and abandoned weapons around Karamakhi and Chabanmakhi, villages in central Dagestan. Interior Ministry spokesman Mikhail Arkhipov insisted the units were in full control of the area.The villages were strongholds for a group of Wahhabis, a fundamentalist Islamic sect that had driven out Russian authorities and imposed its rigid version of Islamic law for the past year.
Russian army and Interior Ministry forces fought for two weeks to oust the rebels. After daily battles, soldiers raised the Russian flag Sunday in Karamakhi and Chabanmakhi.
Army troops started leaving the villages Tuesday, Arkhipov said. He did not say how many Russian troops had been there.
Meanwhile, Russian forces bombed rebels on a second front in Dagestan, the Novolakskoye region, close to the border with breakaway Chechnya.
The strikes were aimed at gun positions and rebel trucks around the villages of Novolakskoye, Akhar, and Shusheya and along the Chechnya-Dagestan border, Arkhipov said.
No casualties were immediately reported.
Chechen officials said Russian bombs hit a village inside Chechnya, Sholkovskaya, the Interfax news agency reported. Russian forces have acknowledged hitting Chechnya before but insist they are targeting rebels, not settlements.
With the Karamakhi area apparently under Russian control, federal forces were concentrating on the Novolakskoye region and were planning to send 2,500 new troops and 150 armored personnel carriers in the coming days, Interfax said.
Muslim militants seeking to create an Islamic state in southern Russia have been battling Russian security forces in Dagestan for more than a month.
Some Russian officials believe the fighting in Dagestan is linked to explosions at Moscow apartment buildings Thursday and Monday.
Russia's lower house of parliament opened its fall session today with a closed meeting on security and the Dagestan fighting.
President Boris Yeltsin today discussed the fighting with Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev and Interior Minister Vladimir Rushailo.
The Russians say hundreds of rebels have been killed since fighting in Dagestan began in August, though the militants say the claim is exaggerated.
The Russians have lost more than 150 Interior Ministry troops, with at least 645 wounded, since the start of the fighting in early August. The figures do not include Defense Ministry forces, which have also taken part in the battles.