Russia Raid Hints at New Ethnic Conflict

[bicentennial_baby]

KIZLYAR, Russia - Masked Chechen soldiers apparently avenging the killing of a woodcutter raided a tiny village, beat and killed residents and set homes afire in an onslaught threatening to touch off new ethnic conflict in the region.

The Kremlin called for an inquiry into the raid, in which a 77-year-old man was killed and 11 people disappeared. If such incidents are repeated, "the North Caucasus will burn," warned Russian President
Vladimir Putin's special envoy to the region, Dmitry Kozak.

Chechnya has been locked in a separatist conflict for much of the past decade, and human rights groups accuse Russian forces and their local allies of persistent abuses against civilians, including kidnappings and killings.

But the June 4 raid in Borozdinovskaya pitted ethnic Chechens against ethnic Avars, marking the first serious conflict between the two groups. It was so frightening that villagers, failing to attract local authorities' attention to the abuses, abandoned their houses June 16 and fled to nearby Kizlyar in Dagestan, about 1,250 miles south of Moscow.

Now, the refugees live in tents on a bleak field, where two makeshift outhouses serve as the only sanitary facilities. The village's cows provide milk and cheese to supplement food aid, and the children carry water back from the nearby Terek River.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050626/ap_on_re_eu/russia_village_uprooted