Kizlyar-Pervomayskoye Hostage Crisis - Rebel Breakout

Rebel Breakout

On the eighth night, despite Interior Minister Kulikov's assurances that three rings of security forces had surrounded the village, Raduyev and his men managed to break out of the encirclement and escape in the early morning of January 18, 1996, taking with them about 20 Russian police hostages and some civilians. A number of wounded guerillas were carried on stretchers, while some 20 seriously injured fighters who could not be moved were left behind.

The storm group lost 17 out of 40 members during the escape, according to its leader, Turpal-Ali Atgeriev. The follow-up support group with the wounded and hostages led by Aydemir Abdallayev lost 26 men killed, according to Abdallayev. The rear guard was commanded by Suleiman Bustayev. Many of the rebels were killed by strafing attacks by Mi-24 helicopters in the ensuing pursuit; three or four hostages also perished. The breakout column eventually crossed the border at a river using a gas pipeline and escaped.

At the same time, another 200 to 300 guerrillas, sent by Dudayev, crossed the border from Chechnya where hundreds of fighters from all over Chechnya grouped under the command of Maksud Ingulbayev. To aid the breakthrough they mounted a diversionary attack on the Russian lines from behind and then briefly took over a school in the neighboring village of Sovetskoye, just a few kilometers outside Pervomayskoye. The relief column, like Salman Raduyev's detachment earlier, apparently made its way through Russian-patrolled areas of Chechnya and Dagestan (Russian military and law-enforcement officials accused the residents of two nearby villages of having colluded with the rebels).

Russian forces finally captured a pulverized village full of the corpses of Chechen fighters, Dagestani civilians, and Russian soldiers. When the fighting was over, one Russian regular army soldier unintentionally fired his armored personnel carrier's cannon; the shell hit and blew up another armored vehicle, its fragments landed amongst the elite Alpha Group, killing two FSB commandos and injuring three others. 82 of the Kizlyar hostages were rescued, according to Yeltsin, but his Prime Minister Chernomyrdin said that only 42 hostages had been freed. The Chechens claimed to still hold more than 60 Russian and Dagestani captives, now held in the Chechen town of Novogrozny.