VLADIKAVKAZ, Russia (AP) - The rebel foreign ministry of breakaway Chechnya on Thursday condemned a statement by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell labeling Russia's opponents in Chechnya terrorists.
"Powell's assertion is a misleading statement and an affront to the truth, decency and morality of the thousands of Chechens made homeless by Russia's dirty war in Chechnya," a statement from the ministry said.
After a Russia-NATO summit in Rome on Tuesday, Powell told reporters: "Russia is fighting terrorists in Chechnya, there's no question about that."
But he also urged a political solution to the 2 1/2-year-old war and insisted that Russian troops "meet the highest standard of human rights that one would expect from a civilized country."
Russia has long insisted that it is fighting international terrorists in Chechnya, not political separatists. Western governments have urged negotiations and expressed concern about troop abuses of civilians, though U.S. President George W. Bush has said the rebels have links to terrorism.
The rebel statement came as about 60 residents of a Chechen village protested in capital Grozny against an unusually long Russian security sweep preventing them from returning home.
The protesters, mostly women, said they couldn't rejoin their families for 10 days because Russian troops had sealed their village of Mesker-Yurt.
Human rights groups say the security operations terrorize communities and often result in torture, beatings, and killings. Russian forces recently instituted new orders aimed at meeting the concerns, but residents say little has changed.
Yakub Sergunin, deputy chief of the Moscow-appointed administration of Chechnya, addressed the crowd, saying, "Crimes will continue until excessive troops are withdrawn from the republic or distributed to barracks." He said there are 80,000 Russian troops in Chechnya.
The administration sent a commission to Mesker-Yurt to investigate.
Meanwhile, eight Russian troops were killed and 13 were wounded over the past 24 hours in rebel raids and mine blasts across Chechnya, an official at the pro-Moscow administration said Thursday. Speaking on condition of anonymity, he said two rebels were killed.
In one of the shootouts, rebels shot and killed two Russian policemen guarding a marketplace in the town of Shali. In another case, a Russian military jeep exploded on a mine in Grozny, killing one policemen and wounding three others.
Russian forces re-entered Chechnya in 1999, after rebels invaded neighboring Dagestan and after a series of apartment bombings that killed some 300 people in three Russian cities and were blamed on the rebels.