Renewed Fighting In Chechnya Leaves 600 Dead Cease-Fire In Shreds As Russians Try To Drive Separatist Rebels Out Of City

A ferocious government offensive to drive separatist rebels from the second-largest city in Chechnya has killed more than 600 people - nearly half of them civilians, the commander of Russian federal forces in the region disclosed Monday.

The staggering death toll from an 11-day battle for control of Gudermes underscores the utter collapse of a July cease-fire and hints at a fierce insurgency likely to confront the new puppet leadership chosen for Chechnya in a Kremlin-orchestrated election.

Independent Television and the Tass news agency quoted Gen. Anatoly Shkirko, commander of federal forces in Chechnya, as saying the fighting had killed 38 federal troops, more than 300 Chechen “militants” and 267 civilians. Hundreds more were reported wounded.

The toll of the worst fighting since government troops took the Chechen capital of Grozny last January prompted Russian Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin to vow there would be no rekindling of the year-old conflict which has cost as many as 20,000 lives.

“We will not let the Chechen war go into a second round,” declared the government chief who was instrumental in negotiating the now-defunct truce after a deadly hostage incident in the southern Russian town of Budennovsk in June.

Chernomyrdin expressed “big hopes” that Doku Zavgayev, the Chechen leader who was elected in a Dec. 17 vote, will have the authority to restore order in the breakaway republic and rebuild it within the Russian federal framework.

But Chechen rebels loyal to fugitive President Dzhokhar M. Dudayev seized Gudermes on Dec. 14 in what both sides acknowledge was an attempt to disrupt the election that many Chechens view as a plot to bestow legitimacy on Moscow’s handpicked leaders for Chechnya.

The conflict has worsened in the wake of several assassinations and attempts against the lives of Moscow-installed officials.

Anatoly S. Kulikov, the Russian interior minister, insisted Dudayev’s forces have been routed, but he conceded the guerrillas still at large remain strong enough to wage hit-and-run attacks on federal troops who control most of the shattered republic.

The Kremlin sent soldiers and armor into Chechnya on Dec. 11, 1994, to quell a secession attempt by Dudayev, a Soviet-era air force general elected president of the republic after the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union.

The election of Zavgayev ostensibly deposed Dudayev, but few Chechens regard the change as legitimate.