12:43, 14 April 2005

Three lives added to death count

Chechen police officers were conducting a targeted examination of a private house in Aralskaia St in the Butenko community in Grozny's Staropromyslovskii district on the night of Wednesday, Novosti news agency reports. The police had information there might be rebels hiding in the house. "The information was confirmed, but the bandits refused to surrender and shot their automatic weapons at the police officers. As a result, a junior lieutenant was wounded," said the source.

He added there were no rebels in the house when the internal affairs ministry officers managed to broke into it. In one of the rooms, they found the body of the house owner, a woman, with a gunshot wound in her head. An examination is under way.

Two members of an illegal armed unit were killed yesterday, 13 April, in a skirmish on the site of a destroyed tinned food factory in Grozny's Leninskii district. This is what Chechnya's law enforcement agencies told Interfax.