MOSCOW. Sept 30 (Interfax-AVN) - Over 40 rebels under field commander Ruslan Gelayev who entered Russia from Georgia have reportedly died in a battle near the village of Galashki in the Ingush autonomous republic.
"At least 44 rebels were killed in a special operation near the Chechen-Ingush administrative border. This figure is not final. I am speaking of those whose death has been documented. There might be dozens of wounded among the rebels," Colonel General Yuri Baluyevsky, deputy chief-of-staff of the Russian Armed Forces, told the press on Monday.
Russian 58th army units surrounded the nearly 180-men-strong gang outside Galashki where they came from North Ossetia which they had infiltrated from Georgia's Pankisi Gorge. Seventeen servicemen died in the clash. Last week's reports of rebel casualties ranged from 30 to 80.
The 58th army command has no evidence in support of reports about Gelayev being wounded, Vladimir Chirkin, the army's chief-of- staff, told Interfax on Monday. General Sergei Babkin, head of the Federal Security Service's Chechen branch, told Interfax likewise.
On the other hand, radio interceptors clearly heard somebody who probably used the man's personal radio saying "Gelayev is wounded," a military intelligence official told Interfax. Still, there is no reliable evidence of the radio's location and thus of Gelayev's whereabouts, the official said. He could be at the scene of the fighting, somewhere in Chechnya or even in Georgia, the source said.