STAVROPOL. Oct 3 (Interfax-AVN) - The report of a 200-men strong rebel unit breaking into the Russian internal republic of Ingushetia in the vicinity of the Dzheirakh Gorge are untrue, Lieutenant General Valery Putov, chief of staff in the North Caucasian regional border guard department, told Interfax-Military News Agency on Thursday.
"There were no violations of the Russian-Georgian border, not to speak of anything of that scale," he said.
"As far as we know, media reports on the breakthrough of another large guerilla unit into Ingushetia are results of misinformation spread by rebels staying in Georgia's Pankisi Gorge. They are doing it to conceal their true intentions concerning the direction of a border breakthrough they are planning to stage," Putov said.
A source in Ingush law enforcement agencies had earlier said that a rebel unit had entered the republic and was on the move to aid the gang of field commander Ruslan Gelayev, surrounded in the vicinity of the village of Galashki.
Meanwhile, the encircled guerillas offer stubborn resistance. They opened fire at a ZIL truck on Wednesday, wounding three servicemen. One of them, Private Shakhmurad Mukhamedov, died of wounds in hospital.