CHECHEN REBELS RELEASE HOSTAGES FOLLOWING SIEGE.Byline: Associated Press Associated Press: see news agency. Associated Press (AP) Cooperative news agency, the oldest and largest in the U.S. and long the largest in the world. Chechen rebels freed all 2,000 hostages they seized in southern Russia, a news agency reported today. The Interfax news agency said the rebel guerrillas released the captives, which included men, women and children held all day in a hospital, then left Kizlyar in the neighboring neigh·bor n. 1. One who lives near or next to another. 2. A person, place, or thing adjacent to or located near another. 3. A fellow human. 4. Used as a form of familiar address. v. Dagestan republic Dagestan Republic or Daghestan Republic (dägəstän`), constituent republic (1999 pop. 2,074,000), c.19,400 sq mi (50,250 sq km), SE European Russia, bounded on the E by the Caspian Sea. on 11 buses bound for Chechnya. No further details were immediately available on the end of the siege, which had left scores dead in fighting Tuesday. Last June, a similar rebel hostage-taking siege in another southern Russian town left more than 100 people dead. Earlier Tuesday, the Chechen rebels demanded a full Kremlin withdrawal from their secessionist republic where Russian troops had been for 13 months in exchange for the hostages' freedom. It was not clear why they decided to drop that demand, though on Tuesday some Kremlin officials threatened to use force against the guerrillas if talks between the hostage-takers and Dagestan authorities failed to produce results. The negotiations in Kizlyar, just outside Chechnya in Dagestan, resumed early Wednesday, said Dagestan's deputy interior minister, Gennady Shpigun General Gennady Nikolaevich Shpigun (Геннадий Николаевич Шпигун) (February 5 1947 – ca. . In talks earlier, the rebels had demanded buses and passage to Gudermes, the second-largest town in Chechnya, Shpigun told Interfax. Officials in Dagestan said Tuesday night that rebel demands were changing constantly, except that of a Russian withdrawal. Other demands were said to include direct talks between the Kremlin and rebel leader Dzhokhar Dudayev Dzhokhar Musayevich Dudayev (Chechen: Dƶoxar Dudayev; Cyrillic: Дудин Муса кант Жовхар and the resignation of the Moscow-backed government in Chechnya. Tuesday's raid on Kizlyar was a copycat version of the June attack in which Chechen separatists separatists, in religion, those bodies of Christians who withdrew from the Church of England. They desired freedom from church and civil authority, control of each congregation by its membership, and changes in ritual. In the 16th cent. seized hundreds of hostages in a hospital in the southern town of Budyonnovsk. Moscow poured troops into Chechnya in December 1994 to reclaim the small southern republic from Dudayev. The war has killed up to 30,000 people, most of them civilians, and uprooted more than 600,000. The overwhelming military might has given the Kremlin nominal control, but the Russians and their Chechen allies are still facing rebel attacks in and around the borders of Chechnya. The rebels in Kizlyar were led by 28-year-old Salman Raduyev This article is about Salman Raduyev, with the nickname "Titanic". For other uses, see Titanic. Salman Raduyev (or Raduev; Russian: , Dudayev's son-in-law and once a senior official in Gudermes. "We can turn this city to hell and ashes," the bearded Raduyev, who sported a green Islamic war band around his forehead, said in an interview broadcast Tuesday evening by Russian TV. CAPTION(S): MAP CHECHNYA RUSSIA The New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Times |
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