VLADIKAVKAZ, Russia - Fighting between pro-Moscow forces and separatists in war-torn Chechnya has left five people dead and 15 injured on the Russian side in the past 24 hours, a local government official said Friday.
Two pro-Moscow Chechen policemen died and two others were injured when an explosive went off underneath their jeep in the capital Grozny, said the official in Chechnya's pro-Kremlin administration, on condition of anonymity.
The body of another Chechen policeman was found with bullet wounds on the outskirst of the southwestern town of Achkhoi-Martan, he said.
One Russian sapper died and two were injured during a sweep of a road near Vedeno, a village in the southern mountains that serve as a stronghold of the Chechen separatists.
Five soldiers were injured after their military column was hit by rocket propelled grenade fire near the village of Starye Atagi, south of Grozny.
One Russian soldier died and six were injured in other attacks throughout the republic.
Chechen separatists have been fighting Russian regular forces and local pro-Moscow militias for more than five years, the second such war in less than a decade.
Russia insists that the situation in the mountainous Muslim republic has normalized and doesn't provide a tally of its losses on a regular basis. Rights groups accuse Moscow of deflating the statistics that it does release.
Last week the defense ministry said that 3,419 Russian soldiers had died since 1999 in Chechnya, but rights groups estimate the actual toll could be up to 15,000.
Russia has 80,000 troops in Chechnya, 30,000 under the orders of the defence ministry and 50,000 under the interior ministry and the Federal Security Service (FSB).
Tens of thousands of civilians have been killed over the last decade.
04/08/2005 14:51 GMT