Russia's 'humanitarian weapon'

Russian soldiers are often ambushed in Chechnya

By Nikolai Gorshkov BBC correspondent in Moscow

A Russian arms producer has unveiled a new type of weapon - one that can be used for humanitarian purposes.

The portable launcher can send containers with food, water and first aid across enemy lines.

Thousands of Russian soldiers have died in Chechnya

Designers at an Omsk arms factory in Siberia have long been thinking how to help soldiers who get ambushed in the mountains of Chechnya and can't get help quickly enough.

They have developed a mini-mortar launcher which is recoilless and weighs only 14 kilos (30 pounds).

It can be fired from the shoulder and propels containers with life-saving provisions to distances of 3 kilometres (2 miles).

The containers can be filled with food, water, medicines, or, indeed, munitions supplies.

Help for refugees

For soldiers, cut off and surrounded in a mountainous terrain, such supplies could mean the difference between life and death, the weapon designers say.

Refugees in remote or dangerous places could also be supplied more easily without risking the lives of aid workers.

But the military and aid officials are not flocking up to the factory with their chequebooks.

Instead, some observers believe that this novel delivery system may attract the attention of another group - drug smugglers.