After Attacks, Russia Ups Safeguards in Chechnya

MOSCOW —  In response to five suicide truck bombings that killed dozens of servicemen, Russia imposed new security measures Tuesday in the separatist republic of Chechnya, trying to regain the upper hand in territory it has long claimed to have under control.

Dozens of Chechens suspected of assisting the bombers were detained, and Russian forces announced that any vehicle spotted moving after curfew would be fired upon without warning.

Russian officials released little new information about the attacks but were quick to point fingers. Nikolai P. Patrushev, head of the Federal Security Service, blamed the bombings on local Russian commanders who failed to heed security warnings.

“A special state leadership instruction on this problem will be issued” in the near future, Patrushev said, according to the Interfax news agency. “We all will draw conclusions, both together and each agency separately.”

The bombings took the lives of 33 servicemen and wounded 84 others, Kremlin war spokesman Sergei V. Yastrzhembsky said Tuesday. A day earlier, he had said 37 servicemen were killed in the Sunday night attacks, which struck in three of the republic’s largest towns and a smaller one. The most deadly attack killed about two dozen elite OMON police troops from the Ural Mountain city of Chelyabinsk who were stationed in the Chechen town of Argun.

Yastrzhembsky offered no explanation for the lower death toll, and a woman who answered the phone at his office said she would be unable to obtain one.

Andrei Shevtsov, a senior lieutenant with the OMON who was wounded in the Argun blast, told the NTV network that his unit had received frequent threats from the rebels.

“We got these warnings every day: ‘Someday soon we’ll deal with you,’ ” he said from his hospital bed, his head wrapped in gauze. “And here we are: We have been dealt with. They kept their promise.”

It was not clear how many rebels or civilians may have been killed or wounded in the attacks. Presumably, at least five bombers died. There were conflicting reports of civilian casualties in firefights prompted by the bombings.

Tight security measures have been in place for months in Chechnya, with military checkpoints every few hundred feet in major towns and a 9 p.m.-to-7 a.m. curfew throughout the region. However, locals often are able to wheedle or bribe Russian troops to pass through the checkpoints or move around at night.

Russian troops fought the Chechen rebels in a 1994-96 war before a series of rebel raids forced the Russians to withdraw in defeat. Moscow went to war against the rebels for a second time last fall after Chechen warlords launched an incursion into the neighboring republic of Dagestan and after a series of apartment house bombings blamed on Chechen separatists killed about 300 people in Russia.

In 10 months of fighting, Russian forces have pushed the rebels deep into their mountain bases, and generals have several times suggested that the military phase of the war is essentially over. However, many Chechen fighters are believed to be hiding among the civilian population, and guerrilla-style attacks on Russian targets have been growing by the week.