MOSCOW. April 7 (Interfax-AVN) - Human rights activists claim that more than 3,000 local residents have been killed in Chechnya over the past five years.
"We have registered 3,101 residents from mid-2000 to 2005 who have been killed," Dmitry Grushkin, a spokesman for the Memorial human rights center, told reporters on Thursday.
Also, 1,543 local residents have been kidnapped over the same period and 892 of them are still missing," he said.
Sixty-four residents have been kidnapped since January 2005, 29 of them are still unaccounted for, 31 have been released and two were found dead, he said.
"Another two people previously regarded as missing are facing legal proceedings," the spokesman said.
Forty-five residents of Chechnya, including 25 civilians, have been killed in 2005, Grushkin said, adding that all figures were based on the results of Memorial's human rights monitoring in Chechnya.
"Our monitoring covers about 30% of the Chechen territory but even of that 30% we can't register all offences committed," the spokesman said.
Meanwhile, the Chechen authorities say that the number of kidnappings reported by human rights groups are exaggerated.
"The problem of kidnappings does exist but its scale has been sharply reduced," Chechen Security Council's Secretary Rudnik Dudayev told Interfax in late March.