Background Briefing

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Grozny-Goity Road, December 2-3, 1999

In early December, Russian forces had almost completely encircled the capital Grozny, leaving only a single exit route along the road to Goity in rebel hands. Heavy fighting ensued in this area as Russian forces sought to cut off an escape route to the southern mountain region, from which it would be difficult to dislodge the rebels. Many civilians were caught in the fighting, as Russian forces shot on almost anything that moved through the remaining exit route. On December 3, the news agency Interfax reported that “Russian planes continuously bombed areas south of Chechnya’s capital Grozny on Friday [December 3]. Russian aircraft had been attacking roads leading from Grozny to Shatoi, Goity, Shali, and Alkhazurovo and a section of an arterial road that stems from Argun since early Friday morning, an Interfax correspondent reports. Every moving object became a target.” (Emphasis added)81


According to eyewitnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch, civilian convoys on the Grozny-Goity road were attacked on December 2 and 3. The attacks were focused on a stretch of road past a former checkpoint of the GAI traffic police and Goity. On December 2, fleeing civilians on this stretch of road were attacked by airplanes, while on December 3, Russian ground troops fired on fleeing civilian vehicles. The separate attacks led to skeptical and confused initial media accounts, pointing out that some witnesses gave accounts of an air attack while others told a conflicting story of a ground attack, and that death tolls varied.82 The conflicting accounts and death tolls are explained by the fact that two separate attacks took place.

Ali Dadashev, aged forty-four, witnessed the December 2 attack. He traveled from Goity to Grozny on that day in an attempt to convince relatives remaining in Grozny to leave the besieged capital. His relatives refused to leave because “they have nowhere to go and don’t want to leave their homes and possessions,” so he began his return to Goity alone in the early afternoon. After passing the traffic police checkpoint, he saw two cars stopped by the road, and when he stopped to speak to the occupants, they pointed out several approaching planes in the sky.


The only thing I managed to ask is, “where are you going?” One of them managed to reply that he was going to Goity and then back to Ermolovka. At that time, we fell down to the earth because we heard the explosions. I knew I was wounded. The two other men asked each other if they were wounded, and I said I was wounded and begged for help.83


The two men tried to bring Dadashev to safety, but again came under attack, and one of the men was killed. Dadashev explained:


One of them took me by the legs, another by the arms, up to the road. We went only one meter when the second plane dropped rockets. The one who was holding my legs was wounded and dying. The second one was also wounded and ran to the road for help. I was bleeding and realized I could not walk. About one and a half hours later, two men in military uniform came, they were Chechens [rebel fighters]. They took me in their white Zhiguli, the one who died was put into the truck.84


At about 2:00 or 3:00 p.m. on December 2, sixteen-year-old Zelimkhan Apolaev went to the hospital in Goity, his home village, and watched wounded from the road attack arrive at the hospital, which was located in a school: “One man came to the hospital with a leg wound. He told us that on the road to Grozny, there were wounded people. He asked people with vehicles to collect the wounded.”85 He and some friends decided to go help the remaining wounded on the road. In the distance, they could see the planes continuing to attack the civilian convoy on the road between the police checkpoint and Goity: “We heard the planes and could see the fire from the burning cars. They [the planes] were firing at the cars, I saw this with my own eyes. ... I saw two planes and saw them fire many shots. They circled, dropped rockets, circled, and fired again.”86


The boys decided it was too dangerous to continue, and sought shelter under a bridge to wait for the planes to leave before continuing towards the wounded. They were joined by wounded from the convoy, who told them about the extent of the attack, and watched as Chechen fighters came to try and evacuate the wounded:


We were in a group with six or seven others. Two of them were survivors from the attack. They told us that a Niva was burned by direct hit, no-one survived from that car. Two women were killed and two other women seriously wounded. They asked us to wait to help the wounded. At that time, a white Zhiguli with fighters came to the convoy driving fast. It didn’t stay long but when it came [by] we saw they had two wounded [civilians].87


Just minutes later, the civilians hiding under the bridge were themselves attacked by the planes:

Two minutes later, there was an explosion about fifty meters away from us. People cried to jump under the bridge and dispersed. Some people jumped under the bridge, but I and my friends ran back towards Goity. Then the plane started bombing the road and the fields, so we laid down in the ditch. ... One moment when we just stood up, the plane attacked the ditch. I got shrapnel in my leg ... I heard another explosion as I fell down wounded, and a friend was wounded in the back, the two others were not injured. I tried to stand up but fell again, and then understood I was wounded, with shrapnel in the side.88


Zelimkhan was taken to the Goity hospital for treatment.


On December 3, the day following the attack on a civilian convoy by Russian aircraft, Russian troops fired on civilian vehicles traveling down the same road. Petimat Uspaeva, a forty-four-year-old Grozny resident, left the capital with her husband in response to the Russian ultimatum which effectively told civilians to leave Grozny or be destroyed: “All the people were trying to flee Grozny because they were given only two days.”89 They left the capital at about 1:00 p.m., traveling in a convoy of some fifteen to twenty passenger cars and a bus towards Goity, the only safe southern route out of Grozny. As they approached Goity, they first came across the remnants of an earlier civilian convoy which had been attacked by Russian forces:


There were two or three cars waiting, just standing by the road. We could not understand why the cars were waiting and not moving. As we were driving, the planes were bombing. Some cars were burning, and other cars were damaged. We drove past these. We thought that the planes had [done their damage], and decided to drive faster.90


As they drove on, the civilian convoy they were traveling in came under direct fire from Russian troops stationed by the side of the road. The attack took place at about 2:00 p.m., when the convoy was two kilometers from Goity, and about three or four kilometers past a former traffic police checkpoint:


When we were two kilometers from Goity, which was announced a safe zone, someone started shooting from the forest. I was sitting in the front right side [of the car] and the shooting was coming from my side. The bullets also hit my feet. It was machine gun fire. There was a river, and the Russians were on the other side of the river. ... There were many wounded people, and some killed. ... When I arrived at the hospital [in Goity] it was full with wounded and they were arriving with more, again and again.91


Petimat and her husband were saved by some Ingush civilians who came and rescued them, bringing them to the hospital in Goity. They and the other civilians had to leave their vehicles behind. The vehicles were later destroyed by the Russian forces. Petimat remembered seeing a bus at the scene of the attack. The tires of the bus had been punctured by gunfire.


Rosa Bakaeva, a thirty-year-old Grozny resident, was also fleeing Grozny on December 3 and arrived at the scene of the attack near Goity just after the incident. She saw a bus on fire and then herself came under fire from a group of Russian soldiers on the road:


Before we reached Goity, we saw a car which was attacked. One woman who was in the car cried out that it was a bomb attack, and when we looked out we saw the burning bus and the bodies of the people. We wanted to turn around but then our car was also attacked. There were Russian soldiers [ahead of us and to one side] and when we tried to turn around the Russian soldiers fired their automatic weapons. One woman asked the driver to stop. When we stopped, I was wounded [in the knee and in the head.]92


The Russian soldiers who had shot her administered first aid to Bakaeva, and then instructed the driver, who was also slightly wounded, to continue to Goity. Bakaeva believed that the soldiers belonged to the Ministry of Interior OMON troops. She did not see any Chechen fighters at the scene of the attack or on the road while driving to Goity. She saw several corpses of civilians, including women, at the scene of the attack, and believed that there were more casualties inside the burning bus:


I saw that the bus was on fire and there were many cars that were attacked also. The women were running and shouting. ... I must have seen at least ten or twelve bodies. I remember the bodies of two women in a Volga ... The other bodies were on the ground and in the other cars. I saw the bus on fire, but didn’t see the victims, but I heard that there were many people inside.93


Sixty-one-year-old Shepa Tsimakaev was also trying to flee Grozny, and took a taxi to Goity, together with an old man and two women. He told Human Rights Watch how his taxi was attacked shortly before reaching Goity:


Approximately two kilometers from Goity we were attacked, between the GAI checkpoint and Goity. We did not know there were Russian troops and APCs in the field. There was a line of soldiers coming up to us and firing. There wasn’t any fighters with us, just old men and women. The old man [in my taxi] died immediately. The driver’s face was [bloody] and he couldn’t talk, I don’t know if he died or not. ... After the attack, we saw there was a bus and a “Niva” ahead of us. The bus was across the road. I got hit in the head and the blood was streaming out, so I was blinded and couldn’t see well. Six bullets hit me in the thigh, two bullets went through. I can’t see anything out of my right eye, the nerve is touched. Three bullets also hit me in the left leg.94

The Russian soldiers who attacked the convoy then approached the civilians and administered first aid to some of them. According to Tsimakaev, some of the soldiers swore at them, blaming the civilians for the deaths of Russian soldiers the previous day, and then left the civilians:


The soldiers came up to us. I asked them, ‘What are you doing, why are you shooting at women?’ They said it is war. One soldier put a bandage on me, another tried to give me an injection. Then soldiers came up with a submachine gun, [yelling] ‘You bastards, you killed many of our comrades yesterday!’ They told us to lay down, I thought they were going to kill us. ... The soldiers left immediately, ten or fifteen minutes later.95


Seventy-five year old Mazhid Muridov, a resident from the Oktyabrskii district of Grozny, was traveling in the same convoy of vehicles when they came under attack. After passing the GAI checkpoint, “[s]uddenly, our vehicle was hit by bullets and one man in the vehicle cried out that we were attacked. After that, we saw that there were many soldiers on the right side of the road. When the vehicle stopped, more soldiers appeared in front and on the other side. I quickly opened the door and threw myself on the ground. When I was lying on the ground, I was hit by bullets.”96 A woman and a man of about sixty traveling in the car where killed instantly, but he did not know their identity as he was sharing a hired vehicle with them. Muridov lost consciousness, and when he awoke he and a wounded woman had to walk to safety. They walked past a bus which was burning: “When we were walking we saw the bus on fire. The bus had been behind us, but maybe it overtook us and was attacked. ... The fire was very big, and I think there were people on the bus.”97 The elderly Muridov broke down in tears when he related how he saw a mother and her young son die after the attack:


In the convoy with us, there was a woman with a child of about five or six [years old]. When I became conscious, I saw the boy lying on the ground. There was foam coming from his mouth and he was calling for his mother. The mother was lying a few meters away, and when she heard her son calling, she tried to get up but fell again and died. They boy later died also. The boy and the mother were very beautiful, I wish I had died there and the women and boy survived.98


No witness interviewed by Human Rights Watch was able to give an accurate casualty count of the two attacks, although all witnesses reported having seen corpses at the scene of the attack. Their inability to give an accurate casualty figure is probably due in part to the fact that a number of separate attacks occurred, and most victims were quickly removed from the scene after the attacks. The initial media reports gave a casualty count of as many as forty civilians, and a doctor at a hospital in Ingushetia told the New York Times that he had received a report that between twelve and fourteen people had been killed in the air attack.99 More accurate information about the death toll of the attacks is not available, but it is clear that a significant number of civilians were killed in the attack.




[81]"Russia’s Federal Troops Shell Chechen Capital and Surrounding Roads,” BBC Worldwide Monitoring, December 3, 1999.

[82]See, for example, Michael Gordon, “Russians Strafe Chechen Refugee Convoy: Death Toll in Dispute,” New York Times, December 4, 1999.

[83]Human Rights Watch interview with Ali Dadashev, aged forty-four, Nazran Republican Hospital, Ingushetia, December 7, 1999.

[84] Ibid.

[85]Human Rights Watch interview with Zelimkhan Apolaev, aged sixteen, Nazran, Republican Hospital, Ingushetia, December 7, 1999.

[86] Ibid.

[87] Ibid.

[88] Ibid.

[89]Human Rights Watch interview with Petimat Uspaeva, aged forty-four, Galaskhi Hospital, Ingushetia, December 23, 1999.

[90] Ibid.

[91] Ibid.

[92]Human Rights Watch interview with Rosa Bakaeva, aged thirty, Sunzha hospital, December 8, 1999.

[93] Ibid.

[94]Human Rights Watch interview with Shepa Tsimakaev, aged sixty-one, Sleptsovsk, Ingushetia, February 10, 2000.

[95] Ibid.

[96]Human Rights Watch interview with Mazhid Muridov, aged seventy-five, Sunzha Hospital, Ingushetia, December 17, 1999.

[97]Ibid.

[98]Ibid.

[99]"Russians Fired on Refugees,” BBC News, December 4, 1999 (reporting at least forty casualties); Daniel Williams, “Masked Troops Kill 40 Chechens, Witness Says,” Washington Post, December 5, 1999; Michael Wines, “Russians Strafe Chechen Refugee Convoy: Death Toll in Dispute,” New York Times, December 4, 1999; Michael Wines, “New Accounts of an Attack on Civilians in Chechnya,” New York Times, December 5, 1999.


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