GROZNY, Russia — Chechen rebels put up ferocious resistance in downtown Grozny Thursday, preventing Russian troops from advancing in several parts of the ruined capital and killing soldiers in surprise attacks.
In northwestern Grozny, soldiers could not advance under heavy Chechen sniper fire from nine-story buildings in the district.
Tanks fired salvo after salvo on the buildings, shrouding the entire area in smoke, while Russian helicopter gunships hanging overhead fired missiles at the Chechen positions.
Bislan Gantamirov, commander of a pro-Moscow Chechen force also fighting in northwestern Grozny, told Russia's ITAR-Tass news agency that the battles today were "extremely heavy" and that some city zones were constantly changing hands.
Elsewhere in Grozny, squads of Russian infantry backed by air attacks and massive artillery barrages also tried to dislodge well-entrenched rebels from the center, the military said.
Federal commanders gave no assessment of how the fighting was going and reported only five soldiers killed and 12 wounded Wednesday.
But some officers, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that some 20 members of a single regiment in northwestern Grozny had been killed overnight when rebels crept through sewage tunnels to attack the Russians. The militants escaped.
The Defense Ministry also said Thursday that a top Russian officer, Maj. Gen. Mikhail Malofeyev, was missing. A ministry spokesman said the general was not on lists of those killed or taken prisoner.
The Chechen separatists were clinging to buildings they had fortified and equipped with underground passages, Russian soldiers said. Small groups of militants were operating in parts of Grozny nominally controlled by the Russians, NTV television reported.
Federal forces, backed by air bombardments, have been pushing into downtown Grozny from several directions, trying to squeeze separatist fighters into a tightening circle. About 50 separatists were killed and 100 were wounded on Wednesday, said Col. Gaidar Gadzhiyev of the Russian military command in neighboring Dagestan. A Russian tank was destroyed, the military said.
There was no way to independently confirm the claims.
Grozny has been a bastion of rebel resistance throughout the four-month war, and its capture would bolster the Russian forces after a number of surprise counterattacks by the rebels in Russian-controlled territory.
The Russian insistence on taking Grozny, which has a more symbolic than strategic meaning, appeared part of the Kremlin's predicted scenario of ending the campaign by late February or early March, ahead of Russia's March 26 presidential elections.
Continued bloodshed could dent the electoral chances of acting President Vladimir Putin, Russia's Nezavisimaya Gazeta said today.
"Tentatively in March, Moscow will announce the completion of the anti-terrorist operation. Otherwise, the whole election campaign would lose its logic ... By all appearances, large-scale combat actions will indeed stop," it wrote.
The military is wary of repeating the bloody and botched 1994-96 campaign, when Russian troops held on to Grozny for more than a year but then suffered a humiliating defeat, losing the city to rebels who descended from their strongholds in the southern mountains.
The second prong of the current offensive is focused on the mountains, where Russian aircraft and artillery have been pounding the mouth of the strategic Argun Gorge, 30 miles south of Grozny, for days.
Residents of several villages in the area said at least 15 civilians had been killed in air raids since Tuesday. At the edge of the Duba-Yurt village, elders crowded around Russian officers on Wednesday, pleading for an end to shelling.
The suffering of Chechen civilians has brought international criticism, and the Council of Europe, the continent's leading human rights body, was planning to debate Russia's handling of the war on Jan. 27.
Lord Russel-Johnston, president of the council's parliamentary assembly who headed a fact-finding mission to the war zone this week, said today that Russia's suspension from the council now looked "more likely than before we arrived."
Meanwhile, a spokesman for Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov denied a report that Maskhadov would soon negotiate with a pro-Moscow Chechen leader, Malik Saidullayev. But Saidullayev continued to insist that he would travel to Grozny early next week to meet with the Chechen president.
Russian troops marched into Chechnya in late September after rebels staged armed incursions into the neighboring Russian region of Dagestan and allegedly organized the bombing of several apartment buildings, which killed about 300 people.