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![]() Thursday, October 21, 1999 Published at 23:02 GMT 00:02 UK ![]() ![]() World: Europe ![]() Rockets blast Grozny ![]() Russian soldiers clean the barrel of a howitzer, north of Grozny ![]() A missile attack on a maternity hospital and a market in the centre of the Chechen capital, Grozny, has left dozens dead and wounded. A Chechen official is reported as saying 118 are dead and up to 400 wounded.
They say Russia appears to be stepping up its military campaign against Chechen separatists. But the Russian Defence Ministry in Moscow "categorically denied" that Russian forces were responsible for the blast.
"It was packed with corpses," she added. "There were women, children - at least 30. There are so many corpses and injured. Every minute they are bringing more and more." A correspondent for the French news agency, AFP, counted 27 dead at the maternity hospital. He said most were women and new-born babies. He said 17 bodies had been recovered from the market.
President Aslan Maskhadov was not in the palace at the time of the attack. Russians closing in Russian forces were earlier reported to be closing in on the city, three weeks after they entered the breakaway republic with the aim of eliminating Chechen rebel fighters.
The attack threw the city into panic, and streets were jammed with traffic as residents attempted to flee.
Russian forces began an air bombardment of Chechnya on 5 September. Officials have said that strikes against rebel bases are being carried out with pinpoint accuracy, but correspondents say attacks on villages have caused widespread civilian casualties. Russia said earlier that its forces had moved to within 12km (7.5 miles) of Grozny, and were forming a defensive ring around it, which would gradually be tightened. The BBC's Angus Roxburgh, who has just returned from the region, says Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin gave a strong indication that ground troops would attack the capital once bombing raids had caused civilians to flee. Mr Putin visited the front line on Wednesday. On Thursday, he arrived in Helsinki, where European leaders were expected to urge a peaceful solution to the war at an EU-Russia summit on Friday. Chechen sources said Russian troops could now be seen with binoculars from the capital's northern outskirts.
Troops have so far been approaching from the north, west and east.
Click here to see a map of the area
Chechen commanders have said they are bracing for a fight and have vowed to defeat the Russians if they send ground troops into Grozny. The city was the scene of a humiliating defeat for Russian forces on 1 January 1995.
Winter worries
A Russian commander on the western front was quoted as saying that the Russian troops needed to occupy large towns before the winter.
Moscow blames Chechen militants for a series of apartment block bombings which killed nearly 300 people, as well as two incursions into neighbouring Dagestan.
The United States has told Russia that it is concerned about reports of heavy civilian casualties and the growing number of refugees in the region. According to figures from Russia's Ministry of Emergencies more than 177,000 people have fled Chechnya to escape the fighting, often without winter clothes, money or food.
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