"The few residents who have managed to leave Grozny in recent days tell of countless people who remain trapped," said Holly Cartner, executive director of Human Rights Watch's Europe and Central Asia division of Human Rights Watch. "Despite the safe corridors, tens of thousands of civilians have been unable to leave, because of the continued shelling or because they are too old, sick, or poor to make the difficult journey to safety. The Russian efforts to allow civilians to leave have been inadequate."

Since Russian forces completed their encirclement of Grozny in early December, few residents of the capital have been able to leave. Daily, hundreds of anxious persons wait at Chechnya's main border post with Ingushetia to await the arrival of relatives from Grozny. Human Rights Watch researchers have interviewed the few residents of Grozny who have made their way to Ingushetia, who describe a city under siege with countless residents still huddled in their basements.

Sixty-five-year-old Duda Garbiekov arrived in Ingushetia in a battered car loaded with young children on December 14, after spending months in his basement without gas and electricity. He tried to leave the city on two occasions in late November, but was forced to turn back because of shelling. He could not reach the corridor through the north of Grozny: "It was too far for us to go through the north, even impossible because of the danger of shelling." Ultimately he was able to flee Grozny on December 12 through a second corridor through the town of Alkhan-Yurt, which has been the scene of widespread abuses by Russian forces (See the Human Rights Watch release, "Russian Troops Rampage in Chechnya Village"). Garbiekov said that many people remain in Grozny: "The people who stay are the old, and women and children. There are many young people too. Usually, the ones who stay are the poor who have nothing to pay for transportation and who have no cars." He left Grozny together with about eighty others, a small fraction of the civilians remaining behind.

Satsita Besultamov, aged thirty, left Grozny on December 12, also traveling via the Alkhan-Yurt corridor. She told Human Rights Watch that shelling was continuing in Grozny when she left on Sunday, and that the impetus for her decision to leave was the shelling death of two persons, a mother of four named Malika and a sixty-year-old man named Isa Saduyev in her neighborhood on December 10 and 11, respectively. When asked whether she knew any people who remained behind, she immediately mentioned more than ten names, and said that she was sure more than 100 people were remaining in two reinforced basements in her street alone: "There are a lot of people who have no money, transport, or warm clothes for the children." When she arrived at the Alkhan-Yurt checkpoint at about 9:30 a.m., she was initially told to turn around, and then to wait until noon. She said that soldiers were extorting bribes: "The soldiers do ask for money and if they find money in your pockets they take it away." She described the case of one young man who was asked to pay a 300-ruble bribe after the soldiers told him his passport was invalid. He was released after paying 50 rubles.

Ali Mavliev, a thirty-eight-year-old car mechanic, left Grozny on December 13. Like the other witnesses, he denied that shelling had stopped in Grozny: "The shelling continues day and night. On television, they say that they are pausing from 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. to let people leave Grozny on the corridors, but actually this is not true.... I heard the shells exploding as we were leaving." Prior to leaving Grozny, Mavliev had visited several reinforced cellars on his street and had counted 126 people. He mentioned his immediate family who remained in Grozny: his father Mousar, his eldest brother Umar, his younger sister Yakha and her four children, her parents-in-law Zainap and Haron, her husband Kura, his brother-in-law Lecha, and two elderly relatives named Halid and Bayant Dudayev, aged ninety and eighty respectively. Russian soldiers ordered him to take the backroads to the Pervomayskaya checkpoint, and the border soldiers took a container with ten liters of gasoline from him at the checkpoint. Another man named Omar was forced to pay 100 rubles after soldiers found fault with his car registration papers.

Mavliev's brother, Abdi, described the wrenching choice Grozny residents face between remaining in Grozny despite the poor conditions and the shelling or taking the risk of traveling on the roads. He told Human Rights Watch, "They were saying there was a corridor, but then people who want to leave hear about the shelling and they're too afraid."

Thirty-nine-year-old Shaarun Abiyed left Grozny on December 10, also via the Pervomayskaya checkpoint. He described to Human Rights Watch how on December 8, several days after the announcement of the Pervomayskaya "safe" corridor, several cars were shelled on the main Starya Promislovsky highway while trying to reach the safe corridor. The cars sustained direct hits fired from a nearby armoured personnel carrier, killing the two elderly occupants of one of the cars. He described the miserable living conditions in Grozny: "There was no electricity or gas, we used wood for heat. We were critically short of water, and had to get water from a ditch that was not good for drinking but we had to drink it." He also mentioned many relatives who remained behind, and told Human Rights Watch that hundreds of civilians, including many children, are living in a damp and unheated Soviet-era bomb shelter at the Transmosh factory in Grozny. After traveling for three hours on muddy backroads, Abiyed was at first told to turn back because the checkpoint had closed for the day, but was later let through after an Emergencies Ministry official intervened.

"The reports from those who have managed to leave Grozny reveal how difficult and dangerous their journey was," said Cartner. "It is doubtful whether those who remain behind can muster the resources for this journey."

Human Rights Watch stressed that the Russian authorities must ensure that any attack on Grozny meets the obligations of the Geneva Conventions, which govern the conduct of war. The Geneva Conventions require that the civilian population is afforded general protection against the dangers arising from military operations, and that military commanders take adequate precautions to limit civilian casualties during military operations.

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