With reinforcements moving into place around Gudermes, Chechnya's
second-largest city, Russian forces pressed their Chechen campaign
overnight
Sunday and into the day on Monday.
The Russians occupy high ground above the Chechen capital of Grozny
and have
surrounded Gudermes, a city that troops have pounded for weeks with
artillery and airstrikes.
"Extra Interior Minister troops will be in need for the onslaught
and
further checking of Gudermes," said military spokesman Maj. Alexei
Vasin.
"We will not move until enough troops are collected."
Moscow sent troops into Chechnya on September 30 after Islamic rebels
twice
invaded the neighboring Russian Republic of Dagestan. Since then,
the troops
have steadily marched across Chechnya's northern third,intending
to restore
Russian control over the region.
Moscow lost control of Chechnya following the 1994-1996 war, which
cost the
Russians thousands of soldiers in an attempt to quash an independence
movement there.
A powerful earthquake rocked much of Colombia and destroyed a number
of
homes in a northeastern mountain town while residents slept early
Monday,
authorities said.
The quake, measuring a magnitude 6.5 and classified as capable of
causing
widespread damage in cities and towns, had its epicenter near Pie
de Cuesta
in northeastern Santander province, authorities said. The quake
struck
shortly before 1 a.m. local time (0600 GMT).
Civil defense officials said a number of homes in the town had been
destroyed, but had no immediate reports of dead or injured. A powerful
jolt
also was felt in the capital Bogota, in the center of the country.
An earthquake measuring 6.1 on the Richter scale struck Colombia's
centralcoffee-growing zone in late January, killing some 1,500 people
and
injuring more than 4,000 others. But an official at the Bogota-based
National Seismological Institute said Monday's quake was located
much deeper
beneath the earth's surface than January's devastating tremor, potentially
limiting the impact.
Relief workers waded through mounds of corpses and rotting animal
carcasses in eastern India today, and field clinics filled with
victims sick
from water contaminated because of last week's cyclone.
The state government of Orissa raised its death toll to 3,417 today,
and
said the count was likely to rise further.
"The death figure may not go up to the 1971 figure, but it will
be more than
the numbers we have now," said D.N. Padhi, the special relief commissioner.
A similar devastating cyclone in 1971 killed 9,665 people.
An official at an emergency ham radio center in Jagatsinhpur, just
one of
several stricken districts, said officials had confirmed 2,464 deaths
in
that district alone.
November 5, 1999
Seventy-five of Britain's hereditary peers won a stay of execution
on Friday
as the vast majority of the nation's aristocracy resigned themselves
to
political oblivion.
The vast majority of the approximately 750 hereditary peers will
lose the
right to sit and vote from the end of next week under a reform bill
pushed
through by Prime Minister Tony Blair's government.
Thank You
Tia