Russia's Itar-Tass news agency quoted military officials as saying that at least 85 soldiers had died when their giant transport helicopter crash landed in Russia's rebel Chechnya province on Monday.
A source in the military headquarters in Khankala told Itar-Tass that two soldiers had said the helicopter had been fired upon from the ground
The Mi-26, one of the largest production helicopters in the world, crashed near the main Khankala military base outside the regional capital Grozny.
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MOSCOW - A Russian military transport helicopter crash-landed in Chechnya on Monday, injuring at least 25 servicemen, the Russian military headquarters in Chechnya said.
The Mi-26 helicopter went down near the military headquarters at Khankala, near the Chechen capital Grozny. There were no deaths, the headquarters said.
However, the Interfax news agency, citing an unnamed source in the military headquarters, reported that the aircraft was shot down by rebels and that according to preliminary information, about 10 soldiers were killed.
The head of the Defense Ministry press office, Nikolai Deryabin, told ORT state television that the pilot had requested permission to perform an emergency landing because an engine was on fire.
He said that 13 servicemen were hospitalized, but offered no other details of casualties.
The military headquarters later said that there were at least 25 injured, but that fire and smoke from the crash hampered efforts to determine the full number of casualties.
The crash came amid a spate of rebel actions against federal forces, including attacks late last week in southwestern Chechnya that killed nine servicemen and five civilians. Some analysts surmised that rebels had intensified their actions to underline to the Russian government that it should enter peace negotiations. A Chechen rebel representative met last week in Geneva with Ivan Rybkin, a former head of Russia's Security Council, to talk about restarting talks that have been stalled since last year.
The government maintains that the current war in Chechnya, launched in fall 1999, is all but over, with just isolated groups of rebels holding out. However, rebels unleash daily attacks that sap the military's manpower and morale.
Most of the attacks are small-scale, targeting soldiers and Chechen police and civilian officials who cooperate with them. But the rebels have made some high-profile hits against top officers.
In September 2001, two generals and 11 other Russian servicemen died when their helicopter was shot down by a shoulder-fired missile shortly after takeoff from Grozny. Another helicopter, an Mi-8 carrying two top Interior Ministry officials and 12 other people, crashed in Chechnya in January. The Kremlin said that crash was due to an accident, but an official with the Moscow-appointed civilian administration for Chechnya said that investigators had found some fragments of the helicopter that suggested it, too, was hit by a shoulder-fired missile.
Interfax, citing Deryabin, said 112 servicemen and five crew members were aboard the helicopter that went down Monday. The military headquarters in Chechnya said the wreckage was still on fire more than an hour after the crash, and that survivors were being evacuated