MOSCOW -- TV footage of bodies lying in a pit, their ankles tied with wire, sparked international calls Friday for Russia to investigate growing allegations of atrocities in Chechnya. Russia angrily charged the video was propaganda.
The grisly footage, provided by German station N-24 and widely shown on Russian television, shows a pile of male bodies in a pit, their legs bound and at least one of the bodies with an ear cut off. The bodies were then covered with soil. It also shows soldiers pushing a blanket-wrapped body off a Russian armored vehicle and a military truck dragging a body across a field.The footage showed no direct evidence of atrocities or how the men died. Some of the bodies appeared to be in camouflage clothing. Whether they were Chechen rebels could not be determined from the footage.
The German station "feels sure there were atrocities committed, but from the pictures themselves no one can say who did it," N-24 chief editor Florian Martius said in Germany.
That interpretation was rejected by Interior Ministry spokesman Oleg Aksyonov.
"The authors of the TV report carried out a political order," he said, according to the Interfax news agency. "Elementary logic suggests that if a crime were committed, video recording was unlikely to be permitted."
He said the tape actually showed the burial of rebels killed in combat.
Russia has come under increasing international criticism for alleged atrocities in its 5-month-old offensive in Chechnya. Refugees and human-rights groups have alleged Russian soldiers have massacred civilians and tortured prisoners.
Civilian women asserted Friday that Russian troops in occupied areas were detaining men of all ages and abusing civilians. "We felt much more comfortable when they were bombing and shelling us," said Leila Dadayeva, 51, who fled the Chechen capital of Grozny this month. "They beat me and my daughter so hard that I couldn't walk for three weeks."
The videotape prompted a new wave of demands that Russia investigate.
President Clinton said the reports were "very troubling" and that international agencies should be allowed to inspect.
British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and Javier Solana, the European Union's top foreign policy official, also asked for an investigation.
"I am very concerned by reports, accompanied by shocking images, of apparent human rights abuses in Chechnya," Solana said.
In Moscow, Council of Europe human rights commissioner Alvaro Gil-Robles brought up the tape in a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov.
"I was terribly shocked by this footage. Any person who feels respect for human life and democracy would have had the same reaction," he told reporters.
Gil-Robles will be allowed to travel to Chechnya sometime this weekend, Russia announced later.
There were conflicting reports on how the German channel obtained the videotape. Martius, the N-24 chief editor, said it was recorded by its reporter Frank Hoefling.
Hoefling is in Chechnya as part of a pool of foreign reporters "but was separated from them when he took the pictures of those who obviously had been tortured."
But a reporter for the respected Russian newspaper Izvestia, Oleg Blodsky, said on Russia's RTR television channel that he had taken the footage and given it to Hoefling.
Hoefling, interviewed by Russia's NTV television by telephone, said he also was told by soldiers that the bodies were of rebels killed in battle but thought this contention "very strange." He declined to say where the footage was taken.
Russia's chief military prosecutor, Yuri Dyomin, said Friday that he had taken personal control over the investigation into the footage. He added that previous allegations of atrocities by the federal troops had not been proven.
Russia's human rights commissioner, Oleg Mironov, called the tape "another propaganda trick by the rebels."
Demoralized Russian soldiers said Friday that desperate Chechen rebels are inflicting heavy losses as they try to escape air and artillery bombardment around Shatoi, one of the militants' last mountain strongholds.
"It's very difficult to approach the rebels, they are desperate and ready to die," said Capt. Alexei Storozhenko. "They raid our positions every night, going to their death like kamikaze fighters."