Russia captures key Grozny Rly station
AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE

GROZNY, JANUARY 6: Russia captured the main train station here today and opened an airborne assault on a key mountain stronghold, but said it was taking heavy losses in its drive to reassert control over Chechnya. "We have taken the railway station," a senior Russian field commander told AFP in the embattled capital of the North Caucasus republic.

It was the first time in the four-month conflict that Russian troops claimed to have established a foothold in central Grozny. The train station is near the presidential palace and has been the site of recent fierce fighting.Russia wrested control of the strategically-vital train station after a group of 350 elite interior ministry troops backed by artillery stormed the building, according to officers.

The operation produced dead and wounded on both sides, they said. No precise figures were immediately available.

Meanwhile, elite airborne assault troops announced they had launched an operation to surround the southeastern mountain village of Vedeno, birthplaceof the feared warlord Shamil Basayev and an important symbolic target.

The commander of Russia's crack assault paratroopers, General Georgy Shpak, said troops had been dropped around Vedeno and some had already fought their way into the village to prepare for a larger encirclement operation.

Seven paratroopers were slightly wounded, but the operation was continuing, Shpak told Interfax news agency.

Unnamed Russian defence sources quoted earlier by Interfax said 84 Russian soldiers had been killed and more than 180 wounded in the past 10 days of fighting in the rebel North Caucasus republic.

A special transport plane had been dispatched to Russia's main military base in the region to evacuate the wounded to Moscow, Interfax said.

Officials did not comment on that report. It was, nonetheless, a telling departure from previous casualty reports, in that it was recent, detailed and not denied.

Russian officials said a day earlier that a total of 475 soldiers had been killed and nearly 1,350 woundedsince the start of the offensive in Chechnya on October 1.

Meanwhile, former Russian president Boris Yeltsin predicted the offensive would be completed successfully in two months.

"It will last two months and then we will put our flag on Chechnya," the 68-year-old Yeltsin said while making a visit to Jerusalem's old city."This is the choice of the Chechen people and then there will be peace."Yeltsin's interim successor, Vladimir Putin, is heavily favoured to win early presidential elections scheduled for March 26. He enjoys record-high rating in polls due to his aggressive prosecution of the Chechnya offensive.

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