MOSCOW — Russian troops have surrounded and sealed off the town of Argun in Chechnya, saying they are searching for rebel fighters and weapons in the latest phase of a major security sweep in the region last week.
President Vladimir Putin and other officials contend that the rebels are linked to international terrorism funded by Islamic extremists. Previous security sweeps have led to charges by Chechens that Russian troops were taking advantage of the situation by looting and abusing civilians.
The Russian government-controlled television channel RTR reported that soldiers were conducting house-to-house searches for Chechen guerrillas in Argun and had detained 18 suspected guerrillas. Argun, Chechnya's third-largest city, is six miles east of Grozny, the capital.
Movsar Temirbayev, a Chechen who heads the pro-Moscow local administration in Argun, told the Interfax news agency that Russian troops were searching destroyed factory buildings that the rebels had used as a base for attacks. He also said roads leading to Argun had been sealed.
Since the new year, several towns have been subject to similar sweeps, including Tsotsin-Yurt, near Argun.
In Tsotsin-Yurt, clashes that since Dec. 30 have resulted in the death of 15 Russian soldiers, 23 rebels and 10 civilians, a Chechen spokesman in the pro-Moscow administration told The Associated Press. Military officials said more than 100 rebels had been killed throughout the region. The rebels say that 40 Russian soldiers have died. Most reports are impossible to verify.
Human rights groups are investigating reports of the killing of civilians in Tsotsin-Yurt. Kheda Saratova, who works for a human rights group called Memorial, said Saturday night that she had just returned from the village and that people there said 37 young men had been killed by Russian soldiers and that homes had been looted during a five-day period over New Year's.
Accusations of brutality in the towns of Assinovskaya and Sernovodsk, near Ingushetia, last summer forced military officials to acknowledge excesses, but in the end the Russian military has said most claims of abuse are exaggerated.
Russian troops fought a 20-month civil war in Chechnya, a part of the Russian Federation, with secessionist rebels, before withdrawing in 1996. They entered again in 1999 after a Chechen rebel incursion into neighboring Dagestan and the death of nearly 300 people in apartment bombings in Moscow and southern Russia. Chechen rebels have been accused of those attacks, although no one has been convicted.
Russia's military resources have been strained by the war. The deputy defense minister, Col. Gen. Nikolai Kormiltsev, commander of ground troops, told Interfax on Friday that Russia would reduce its armed forces to a strength of one million from 1.2 million. Ground forces have been cut over all, he said, but strengthened in strategic locations in the Northern Caucasus around Chechnya and in Central Asia, which borders Afghanistan.