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Vancouver man dead in Chechen fighting |
| Associated Press |
Moscow — A Canadian resident described by Russian officials as an explosives expert was among four insurgents killed in fighting in Chechnya, the Russian Defence Ministry said Friday.
Colonel Vyacheslav Sedov, spokesman for the ministry, identified the dead Canadian resident as Khalil Rudvan of Vancouver.
Mr. Rudvan was killed with three other men in a clash with special forces outside the village of Niki-Khita in the mountainous Kurchaloi region of Chechnya, he said.
Other details, including the date of the clash, were unclear.
The Interfax news agency quoted Major-General Ilya Shabalkin, the Federal Security Service spokesman in Chechnya, as saying that Mr. Rudvan had been an explosives expert who entered Russia in September on a tourist visa. He said Rudvan had entered Chechnya from the neighbouring Russian region of Dagestan, accompanied by three gunmen from a militant group headed by Akhmed Avdorkhanov.
Shoring up their argument that the Chechen insurgency is tied with international terrorism, Russian officials frequently contend that foreign fighters are fighting alongside Chechen rebels. Gen. Shabalkin said Friday that since the start of the first Chechen war in the mid-1990s, mercenaries from more than 50 countries have fought on the rebels' side, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
Russian troops withdrew from Chechnya in 1996 following a brutal 20-month war that left the region de facto independent. They returned in fall 1999 after rebels raided Dagestan and after a string of apartment bombings that Russian officials attributed to the rebels. The insurgents have denied any part in the blasts.
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