Chechnya Conflict Seeps Over Border

Amid shouts, screams and the occasional burst of small-arms fire, 16 sleepy families in three adjoining houses tumbled into their bathrobes and slippers and out into the snow. The bandits holed up in the cluttered apartments. Police laid siege outside.

By the time it was over 16 hours later, the row of houses was little more than a pile of rubble, still licked by fire from flamethrowers and rocket-propelled grenades. The mangled and charred bodies of five bandits and one police officer lay among the ruins. Shortly after 10 p.m., a 44-ton T-72 battle tank rumbled over the wreckage and delivered the coup de grace, crushing any trace of life and the families' remaining possessions.

Here in Dagestan, a southern Russian region wedged between the troubled republic of Chechnya and the Caspian Sea, they call what happened Jan. 15 near the end of quiet Magistralnaya Street the One-Day War. The name is misleading in one respect, many agree: It was but one day of many.

The Chechen conflict has seeped beyond its borders into the northern Caucasus region, and Dagestan is one of the new fronts. The bandits, as the Russian authorities call them, are Muslim insurgents who have crossed over from Chechnya or launched battles on their home turf. The police, like those in many areas of Russia now, wear full camouflage and arrive at their house calls in armored vehicles equipped with battle gear.

Eleven Dagestani police officers have been killed since Jan. 1. Last year, 37 policemen died, including the chief of the Russian Federal Security Service's Dagestan bureau and the Interior Ministry's operations chief. The minister of information and national policy was assassinated in August 2003.

The region's worst outbreak of violence was September's seizure by militants from throughout the region of an entire school in the North Ossetian town of Beslan. The assault led to the deaths of 331 hostages. Battles between Russian forces and insurgents also have occurred in Ingushetia and Kabardino-Balkaria republics, most recently on Sunday, when 100 police in armored personnel carriers brought a fiery end to a three-day siege at an apartment building in the town of Nalchik, killing up to three militants inside and arresting five in sweeps throughout the city.