VLADIKAVKAZ, Russia (AP) - Six Russian servicemen died in separatist Chechnya over the past day, an official said Thursday, while a new poll indicated deepening doubts among the public over the once widely supported war.
For the past two years, the war between Russian troops and Chechen separatists has been bloody but virtually static, with neither side making apparent advances or weakening the other.
Russian forces attack rebels with heavy weaponry and the insurgents launch small hit-and-run attacks and further raise the Russian casualty toll with booby-traps.
Russian airstrikes and artillery assaults hit rebel positions in five regions of the republic over the past day, an official in the republic's Kremlin-backed civil administration said on condition of anonymity.
Two soldiers died when Russian positions came under rebel fire, a policeman was killed in a rebel ambush, two soldiers died when a remote-control bomb went off near the armored personnel carrier and another died when his jeep struck a land mine in Grozny, the Chechen capital, the official said.
In a poll by the Public Opinion Fund, just 24 percent of the respondents said the Chechen conflict should be solved through military action, while 20 percent said force should not be used and that independence should be granted to Chechnya.
The current war had high public support when it began in September 1999 following incursions by Chechnya-based rebels into neighboring Dagestan and after some 300 people were killed in apartment explosions blamed on the rebels.
But the figures from the poll of 1,500 people conducted May 17 could indicate that concerns are rising that the fighting is a repeat of the first Chechnya war's fatal stalemate.
Russian troops withdrew from Chechnya in 1996 after rebels fought them to a standstill in 20 months of battles. The withdrawal left Chechnya largely lawless.