GROZNY, Russia, Nov. 10 — When the sky above the Khankala military base lit up with the explosion of a gunned-down helicopter on Nov. 3, Asya Dazayeva, a slender mother of four who works in a kiosk near the base, knew there would be trouble.
She ran to her house several blocks away on Khankalskaya Street to protect her children, including her deaf teenage son. Soon after, soldiers banged on her door. Gunfire roared almost constantly for more than six hours, until after midnight.
"A soldier came and was shouting at me, `Who shot down the helicopter?' " said Ms. Dazayeva, picking through her belongings. "I said I didn't know. They took our men to check them all. They told me they had orders to blow up the building."
The next morning, Russian soldiers detonated six dilapidated high-rises, leaving at least 23 families without homes and, the other residents say, killing one old woman who refused to leave. The men returned that morning on foot, many in the bedroom slippers they had been wearing the night before, said Ms. Dazayeva and three other witnesses, also residents of the buildings.
Russian military officials defended their actions, saying that the buildings were already close to collapse and that the area needed to be cleared because of its proximity to the military base. Also, residents were given warning, officials said.
"We are poor people," said Ms. Dazayeva, whose husband is an unemployed city bus driver. "Winter is coming. What are we to do?"
It was a new tactic by Russia in this guerrilla war, which has just dragged into its fourth year. One resident drew an analogy to Israel's strikes on suspected militants in Palestinian territory, and echoed the anger and helplessness often expressed by people there.
"Chechens are very angry," said Abu Betsiyev, a resident. "We won't forget this."
Razing the buildings has compounded what was already a grave housing problem for residents of a city devastated by years of war. In residential neighborhoods like Oktyabrskaya, nearly every house is destroyed. Most people live without running water and many, without electricity.
The destruction is a major obstacle to luring back the 275,000 people the United Nations says have fled Chechnya since 1999. The Russian government has earmarked money in its state budget for resettlement and promised families safe passage.
As Russia tries to contain the war in Chechnya — reshuffling the local government and planning elections and a new constitution — a refugee homecoming would serve as an outward sign that the war on the ground was abating, something Moscow wants.
Some have already returned. Husein Gakayev, a cobbler, is one. He brought his wife and four children back here, to the Chechen capital, after finding himself unable to make rent payments on his apartment in the neighboring region of Ingushetia.
The family is now living in a green metal shanty, set in a field with rows of others like it, across the street from the building where he grew up. The field, he said, used to be filled with apricot trees. Now it contains rows of about 80 metal sheds, and is rimmed by partly collapsed buildings with dark, glassless windows.
Mr. Gakayev had to pay about $63 for the trip back to Chechnya. His shanty — provided by the city authorities — is free, but difficulties abound. A water truck has stopped deliveries, and the few families who live in the sheds now carry water from a basement pipe in a neighboring building. A battered stove set on the bare earth serves as a kitchen for residents.
"We don't have to pay for it," said Mr. Gakayev, 48, gesturing to his 12-by-12 shelter. "We bring the children to school, and we wonder if there will be explosions. Something could happen at any moment."
Most Chechens, so far, are staying away. Recently, a group of Chechen refugees in Ingushetia appealed to the president of Kazakhstan to give them asylum there, in Central Asia, where they had been deported by Stalin beginning in 1944. [Kazakhstan refused the request on Thursday.]
Some Chechens blame rebel fighters for their homelessness. A Chechen religious leader from Serzhen-Yurt, who would identify himself only by his first name, Turko, said a training camp for Islamic militants near his village home blew out his windows, after the first period of war with Russia had ended in 1996.
"They kept me in war even though it was supposed to be over," said Turko, who has lost three homes in five years of war. "Fighting, explosions. I told them, 'Take your war away.' When the planes came to drop the bombs, they hit us first because of that camp."
At night the quiet, dark neighborhoods of Grozny hide secrets. One neighborhood, called Stary Sunzhensky, is said to be the home of one of the women who took part in taking hostages in a Moscow theater. Young men who live there said in interviews that she was from an observant Wahhabi Muslim family that had moved into a home on the edge of the neighborhood. She had recently married, they said.
Some signs of life are emerging from the chaos and destruction here. In a residential neighborhood that is a popular spot for Chechen police officers, the Aquarius Cafe is doing a brisk business. Its freshly painted white facade contrasts with the gaping holes and glassless windows open to the sky in the building's ruined second floor.
The poignantly named Renaissance Cafe is across the street. Kheida Debirova, a milkmaid from an agricultural suburb of this city, works as its cook to make extra money. She herself is a returned refugee. In the 1970's, she moved to Chechnya from Kazakhstan, where her family had been deported three decades earlier.
"We came here to live in our homeland," said Ms. Debirova, setting down a bowl of soup. "At 51 years old, I'm left with nothing."