Gunmen seize five Chechens at clinic

A gang of up to 40 masked gunmen kidnapped five patients from Chechnya when they burst into a clinic's waiting room in nearby Ingushetia.

The gunmen forced their victims into two trucks after threatening to shoot in the raid on the Sunzha district hospital in Nazran. One captive was shot and a doctor was hit with a rifle butt in Thursday's attack, a spokesman for Ingushetia's Interior Ministry said.

A ministry official said police believed the attackers were security service staff working for Akhmad Kadyrov, acting president of Chechnya, who was appointed by Moscow. Mr Kadyrov sympathised with the separatists before switching sides.

Mr Kadyrov's spokesman denied the allegation, saying it could be an attempt to taint Mr Kadyrov's image before the presidential election in Chechnya on 5 October.

Residents of Chechnya and Chechen refugees say the security service, headed by Mr Kadyrov's son Ramzan, robs, kills and kidnaps civilians. In a statement yesterday, 28 Chechen non-governmental organisations said they would boycott the vote and warned voters to expect fraud.

In another appeal, 31 prominent Russians challenged President Vladimir Putin to negotiate with rebel leaders. The signatories included Yelena Bonner, the widow of the Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, and Lyudmila Alexeyeva, head of the Moscow Helsinki Group.

In the Chechen capital, Grozny, 300 residents of the Vedeno region blocked the road in front of the civilian administration for a sixth day, calling for detained residents to be freed.

Meanwhile, nine Russian servicemen were killed by a remote-controlled landmine on a road outside Grozny.

Russian forces, who fought a war with Chechen separatists from 1994 to 1996, have been bogged down in the republic since 1999 when they returned after rebel raids on a nearby region and a series of bombings in Russian cities.