Russian Military Shells Chechen Town, Killing 4

The Russian military shelled a Chechen town on Saturday, killing four civilians in its renewed campaign against separatist rebels.

In Moscow, Defense Minister Pavel Grachev said the troops are taking “more vigorous actions to liquidate the bandit formations.”

Grachev, opening a new wing of a military hospital, said the operation in Chechnya will continue “as long as necessary, until the bandits realize that their situation is hopeless.”

On Friday - the day a littlehonored cease-fire expired - the new offensive began with Russian planes bombing the hills north of the village of Shali, 18 miles southeast of the capital, Grozny.

It continued Saturday with artillery and rocket fire thundering across southern Chechnya. Russian soldiers riding atop tanks and armored vehicles gave victory salutes, waving their arms in the air as they rattled through the dust-blown countryside.

An aid worker for Doctors Without Borders said four civilians were killed and 19 wounded in an air raid on Shatoy, a town 28 miles south of the capital, Grozny.

Saturday’s shelling kept a search party from reaching Shatoy to check reports that the body of missing American aid worker Fred Cuny had been found there.

Cuny’s colleague from the Intertect Relief and Construction Corp. of Dallas and a group of journalists came under fire from Russian troops despite promises they would be allowed through.