KULARY, Russia (AP) -- Federal troops advanced through mud and rubble to flush out the last Chechen rebels in Grozny today, while Russian forces combed villages for militants who escaped the shattered capital.
At least 3,000 rebels have fled Grozny since Monday, militants say, and many are trying to join comrades in Chechnya's southern mountains. The rebels insist the outbreak has strengthened their hand, by freeing them from blockaded Grozny and allowing them more mobility to wage a guerrilla war.Russian troops today surrounded villages on the rebels' escape route with armored columns and were checking house-to-house for militants while helicopter gunships buzzed overhead.
But residents said the Russians had arrived after large groups of fighters had already left, and that small groups that fled Grozny overnight had slipped past Russian lines.
Meanwhile, the reduced rebel resistance in Grozny has boosted Russian troops' morale and speeded their advance on the city.
They have been trying to seize the city for more than a month.
Backed by mortar fire and air raids, Russian troops closed in on small bands of rebels scattered among roofless houses and high-rises perforated with shell holes along Grozny's muddy streets.
"The blockade of the city is continuing, the rebels will not break into the mountains," Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev said in an interview published today in the military newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda
Sergeyev claimed that 1,500 rebels were killed trying to leave Grozny.
Many more rebels made it out alive and were moving all week toward the mountains. Most were heading west of Grozny.
Russian deputy chief of the General Staff, Col. Gen. Valery Manilov claimed today that rebel attempts to reach the southern mountains are blocked by military actions that have inflicted large losses of the militants.
About 1,000 militants still remain in Grozny, and another 6,000 to 7,000 in the southern mountains, Manilov said.
The rebels say they lost about 400 fighters when they were caught in a minefield near Alkhan-Kala to the west and pounded by Russian artillery Monday.
Russian officials have begun claiming that the Monday breakout -- the first and largest -- was a plot to trap rebels in the minefield. Gen. Vladimir Shamanov told Russian television stations that some rebels were told the Russians would show them a safe corridor out of Grozny for $100,000. The rebels then were killed in Alkhan-Kala, he said.
"Frankly, we did not expect bandits, especially the key figures, to swallow the bait," Shamanov said. He did not say whether the rebels had paid the money.
Rebels in Alkhan-Kala said the Russians had promised them a safe corridor out but did not say anything about money.
Manilov told a news conference that Russia has decided to start pulling troops out of Chechnya because of the recent changes in fighting, but gave no date or any specifics about how many troops would be withdrawn.
Russian officials say that about 93,000 troops are deployed in and around Chechnya. Officials said this week they were preparing plans for a 15,000-strong, permanent troop presence in the breakaway republic.
Russian troops entered Chechnya in September after an invasion by Chechen-based militants into the neighboring Russian republic of Dagestan, and deadly apartment bombings elsewhere in Russia that were blamed on Chechens.
Russia authorities have restricted information from the war zone, and today closed one of three military press centers in the Chechen conflict area.