In a further intensification of the conflict in the northern Caucasus, the Russian Air Force is reported to have bombed villages inside Chechnya killing 43 people including 12 children, according to Chechnya's deputy prime minister, Mr Kazbek Makhashev.
Chechen officials claim that at around midnight on Sunday Russian aircraft bombed five Chechen villages close to the Dagestan border where Islamist rebels staged an invasion at the weekend. A statement from the local command of the Russian federal forces said the raids were made on rebel training camps within Chechnya.
It is now reported that up to 5,000 rebels in three military groups have infiltrated western Dagestan from Chechnya. They are led by the Chechen warlord, Shamil Basayev, and a Jordanian known only as Khattab. The rebels are adherents of the ultra-strict Wahhabi sect of Islam which originated in Saudi Arabia and are understood to be armed with extremely up-to-date and sophisticated weaponry.
One of their main sources of revenue has been the kidnapping of western visitors to the region. In this context at least Russia's claim that the rebels are bandits appears justified. For their part the rebels describe themselves as mujahideen fighting a jihad (holy war) against the Russian kaffirs (unbelievers).
A senior spokesman for the Interior Ministry, Gen Alexander Chekalin, told Moscow's TV6 channel that 113 police and interior ministry troops had been killed with 404 wounded since the rebels invaded Dagestan.
The car-bomb attack on Saturday night on a military apartment block in the town of Binaksk has now claimed 52 lives according to the Russian NTV channel. While no organisation has claimed responsibility the town's proximity to the battle zone would seem to indicate the rebels were responsible.
President Boris Yeltsin was "deeply outraged" by the bombing and the First Deputy Interior Minister, Mr Vladimir Kolesnikov, has gone on record to say the explosion was the work of the militants.
Supporters of the rebels have claimed responsibility for the bomb which injured more than 40 people in an underground shopping mall in central Moscow last week. Yesterday hospital officials announced that Ms Larisa Itani (26) had died of injuries in the blast. Her husband, a Lebanese citizen, is still in hospital suffering from severe burns.
A vast Turkish owned Hypermarket in suburban Moscow was evacuated yesterday for two hours due to a bomb scare.
The Jordanian field commander, Khattab, has threatened that further strikes will be made on Russian territory, according to the Moscow business daily newspaper Kommersant. The newspaper claimed that he also issued threats against Dagestani people who have been assisting Russian Federal troops.
Most Dagestanis practise a more liberal form of Islam that that advocated by the Wahhabis and to a large extent the conflict involves Muslims fighting Muslims with strong contingents of Dagestani police and soldiers in the Russian Federal forces. Shamil Basayev is particularly disliked by Dagestanis following a ferocious attack on the Dagestani town of Kizlyar during the Chechen war.
Even in Chechnya itself Basayev is regarded as a warlord and in the elections for the local presidency was roundly defeated by Aslan Maskhadov, the architect of the Chechen fighters' military victory over Russian forces.
