Chechnya our terrorism says Russia

MOSCOW, Russia -- Russia's defence minister says the deaths of 10 top officers in Chechnya highlights that Russia has been fighting its own war against "international terrorists."

Sergei Ivanov joined hundreds of servicemen on Friday in paying tribute to 10 senior officers, including two generals, who were killed in the separatist region earlier in the week.

The General Staff officers, members of a commission on cooperation between the Russian military and local pro-Moscow civilian leaders, died when their helicopter was shot down on Monday over Grozny, the Chechen capital.

Ivanov approached each of the coffins, which were draped in red velvet, and spoke to sobbing family members.

"Those who dealt this treacherous blow from behind will be destroyed. We know who shot down the helicopter and are already hunting them down," the Associated Press quoted him as saying.

Ivanov was keen to draw a parallel between the war Moscow is waging in Chechnya and the U.S. efforts to punish the perpetrators of the September 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington.

"I hope that the entire civilised world now has understood the nature of international terrorism," he said in a brief speech. "Russia has long been fighting it and will fight it until the end."

Moscow has long claimed that the rebels in Chechnya were part of a broad international terrorism network, but has not won the sympathy of Western governments, who say the Russian use of military muscle is excessive.

In an interview published on Friday, Russian Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov said Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind of attacks in the U.S., has been funding Chechen rebels and providing them with weapons.

"Every day, bandits bring pain to Russians on bin Laden's money," he said told the official daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta.

The Mi-8 helicopter, carrying the 10 officers, was hit by a shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile moments after it took off from Grozny.

A separate funeral for the three-man crew of the helicopter was to be held in Rostov-on-Don in Russia's south.

The downing of the helicopter came as 200 Chechen rebels also launched an assault on Gudermes, Chechnya's second largest city.

In the same week there were 120 minor attacks with 10 armoured personnel carriers destroyed, apparently confirming fears that actions in the southern Russian region would intensify after the attacks in the United States.

Russia regards the separatists in mainly Muslim Chechnya, who say they are fighting for an independent homeland, as terrorists.

Russian forces withdrew from Chechnya after a 1994-96 war, but returned there in 1999 and have since occupied most Chechen territory.