MOSCOW, Sept 13 (AFP) - A large party of Chechens trying to cross into Poland from the former Soviet republic of Belarus have been sent back by the Polish authorities, Russian and Polish officials told the Russian media late Sunday.
"On Saturday, a group of 125 Russians of Chechen origin were held at the Polish borders," an unnamed senior official with the Russian consulate in the Belarus city of Brest told Moscow Echo radio.
"Twenty four of them were allowed to cross the border, and 101 did not have visas to go to Poland and were sent back," the official added.
A spokesman for the Polish border guards, Yaroslav Zhukovich, confirmed in an interview with the RIA Novosti news agency that some 100 Chechens had been denied entry into Poland.
However, some 30 more Chechens were allowed into Poland on Sunday, another Polish border guards spokesman, Andrzej Vuiczik, told RIA Novosti.
Russia is faced with a guerrilla war that has now reached a new stage, with attacks against civilians killing over 400 people, including some 150 children, in the past month.
Most died in a hostage taking in a school in Beslan, near Chechnya, and two nearly simultaneous explosions on board Russian jets headed from Moscow to Russia's south that officials link to Chechen female suicide bombers.
Then prime minister Vladimir Putin ordered Russian troops back into Chechnya almost five years ago, kicking off a still ongoing war, the second in ten years in this tiny Russian separatist republic.