MAKHACHKALA (Russia) Dec 15: A group of rebels from Chechnya killed nine Russian border guards after crossing into the neighbouring republic of Dagestan on Monday, reviving memories of a 1999 incursion that sparked off the second Russo-Chechen war.

Between 20 and 50 rebels entered the remote mountainous Tsuntinsky region near Dagestan’s border with Georgia around 3:00 am, law enforcement officials said.

Nine border guards were killed and 10 wounded in the ensuing fight, the head of Tsuntinsky regional administration, Basyr Magomedov, told AFP.

The rebels holed themselves up in the village of Shauri for a few hours, took four men hostage and took off with their captives in tow, Magomedov said.

“The band of about 30 people has either headed toward Chechnya or Georgia,” Angela Martirosova, a spokeswoman with Dagestan’s interior ministry, told AFP.

Shauri lies amid the peaks of the Caucasus mountains, some 20 kilometres east of Dagestan’s border with Georgia and 30 kilometres south of the border with Chechnya.

“Since this region is practically not patrolled by border guards, the rebels moved around freely on cars taken away from local residents,” Magomedov said.

One report said local residents saw the rebels and alerted a border garrison near Shauri. A group of border guards then engaged the rebels in battle and were killed. The guerrillas cut off the head of the senior border patrol officer, Magomedov said.

Another account said that the rebels had bought cigarettes and vodka in nearby villages the night before and asked residents where local border patrol garrisons were located.

“This band is very well equipped and armed,” a law enforcement official told ITAR-TASS news agency.

Officials said a state of emergency had been declared in the region, roads to Chechnya and Georgia had been blocked and up to 300 additional border guards and elite interior ministry forces had been sent in as reinforcements.

The incident revived memories of August 1999, when several hundred separatist Chechen rebels stormed into Dagestan and took over two villages in a region more than 100 kilometres north of Tsuntinsky.

The rebels said at the time they planned to establish an Islamic state in the Russian Caucasus.

The incursion lasted several weeks and sparked the second Russo-Chechen war. The then prime minister, Vladimir Putin, sent Russian troops into Chechnya on October 1, 1999, for what was supposed to be a lightning-strike operation to root out “terrorists.”

But the war has dragged on and has settled into a guerrilla conflict that continues to claim civilian, troop and rebel lives on a nearly daily basis.—AFP