The helicopter was shot down by a rocket launched from the land during an operation on landing troops in mountainous wood terrain. Three crew members were killed.

The column was fired on Thursday while the armored group was moving to the place of permanent disposition after convoying a column of federal forces to the administrative border with Chechnya.

The site contains no information on where the server which provides site functioning is situated and who it belongs to. At the same time it is mentioned that ?the activity of the site had been resumed due to the firm position of Lithuanian human rights activists, deputies of the Lithuanian Seym and the head of the Elnet company Rimantas Pasys?.

A stone monument, 6 meters in height, represents a young man confined within the ice mass.

The route was blocked as a sign of protest against actions of the Russian military.

Chechen politician and businessman Malik Saydulayev announced in Moscow that candidates for the post of the Chechen President want to unite in the election struggle against Akhmad Kadirov.

As the head of the international cooperation department of the Defense Ministry Ramiz Nadzhafov reported, about 150 Azerbaijan soldiers are planned to be sent to Iraq.

On Thursday Vladimir Putin held a routine meeting with his envoy for human rights in Chechnya Abdul Khakim Sultygov.

Unknown gunmen broke into the house on Vyborgskaya street, 5, and forced 28-year old Isa Abayev out threatening him with sub-machine guns, reported the ministry.

As it was reported in the regional operations staff for control of the antiterrorist operation in the Northern Caucasus, a radio-controlled self-made explosive assembly containing 800 grams of trotyl was found by federal forces on Mayakovsky Street.

6 corpses in all, as the witnesses say, with marks of cruel tortures were found in the communal grave.

Almost one year passed since the coordinator of the mission of the International Humanitarian organization ?Doctors Without Borders? in Dagestan Arjan Erkel had been kidnapped in Makhachkala on August 12, 2002.

The man who fell a victim to an extrajudicial death penalty executed by the Russian soldiers was not identified.

A competitive commission functions to choose television presenters for the new program. The art director of the Dagestani television announcer department Galina Dulieva is a head of the commission.

Local residents say their relationships with neighbors (Osetins) considerably improved after the agreement of friendship and cooperation between Ingushetia and North Osetia had been signed.

9 people are released from investigation wards because of the amnesty. 127 people who were already condemned and stay prisoned now also fall under the amnesty.

On August 4 representatives of many Chechen human rights organizations met at the ?round table? to discuss questions of human rights observance in Chechnya in the pre-election period.

?The investigation is conducted by the regional prosecutor's office. It is early to speak of the complicity of concrete persons in this crime?, Chechen Deputy Prosecutor Said Pashayev announced.

As it was announced in the information and propaganda department of the Armenian defense ministry, soldiers were killed on Wednesday when they were fired by unknown persons with automatic rifles.

The goal of the program is to stimulate by means of press representatives processes of peace and prosperity establishment in the Southern Caucasus, and especially the processes of changing negative stereotypes that shaped among Armenians, Georgians, and Azerbaijanians towards each other.