RUSSIA - June 19 - Violence In Chechnya.

Three simultaneous car bombings near a courthouse, a prosecutor's office and a police precinct of Chechnya's second-largest city of Gudermes, where the republic's pro-Russian civilian administration is based, kill 3 people and injure 37, including 16 police officers. Chechen rebels were blamed for the blasts. Meanwhile, 16 Chechen refugees living in a tent camp have been conducting a hunger strike to draw attention to their demands that Russian and Chechen leaders enter negotiations to end the war, which has been going on for 22 months. Musa Kuvnurkayev, who entered the sixth day of his hunger strike, says: "We are being killed in Chechnya anyway. There is no difference in how you perish". The hunger strikers, residents of the Satsita and Sputnik refugee camps in Ingushetia, demand that Pres. Putin and Aslan Maskhadov, the Chechen president, start peace negotiations, and that the war be stopped immediately. Moscow officials have said they will not negotiate with rebel leaders, whom they consider terrorists and bandits, and Maskhadov is believed to exercise little real authority over rebel commanders.

On June 18, Putin repeated that Moscow would never allow Chechnya to become independent. On June 21, the rebels killed at least two policemen in attacks coinciding with the first anniversary of the former Muslim cleric Akhmad Kadyrov's pro-Moscow administration taking office. In Moscow, Kadyrov told a news conference that officials were working hard to restore normal life to the region. On June 22, the rebels bomb two army trucks, killing at least 5 people and severely injuring 9. A car bomb exploded in Grozny, killing 3 people and severely wounding 6. Interfax news agency later reported that another army truck had been destroyed by a remote-controlled mine on the region's main highway east of the capital. It said two Interior Ministry soldiers were killed and three severely wounded in that attack.