Chechens `release human shields'

Hostage crisis: Rebel cavalcade returns to home territory flying the flag

A day after leaving the hospital where they had held more than 1,000 hostages, Chechen rebels returned home and were last night reported to have given up their human shield by releasing 130 Russian civilians taken in a convoy of buses to guarantee safe passage.Flying the Chechen flag, the coaches and a refrigerated lorry, carrying Chechen corpses, crossed into Chechnya from neighbouring Dagestan.

The convoy was reported last night to have arrived in the Chechen village of Zandak, where Chechen gunmen were said to have freed a group of Russian journalists, members of parliament and more than 100 people taken hostage in Budennovsk. An official in Dagestan said two buses had taken the rebels to the village of Dargo. At least seven journalists had stayed with the fighters.

As the procession moved into Chechnya yesterday, it was announced in the Chechen capital, Grozny, that Russian and Chechen negotiators had reached a tentative agreement on a three-day ceasefire and the gradual pulling-back of troops.

Temperatures in the buses have soared to 50C (122F), according to a Russian television reporter among 13 correspondents accompanying them.

Most of those travelling with the Chechens were hostages seized in Budennovsk last Wednesday. They "volunteered" to accompany their captors back to Chechnya to secure the release of hundreds of fellow captives. The Chechen guerrillas, led by Shamil Basayev, agreed to leave the hospital in Budennovsk after the Russian Prime Minister, Victor Chernomyrdin, guaranteed their safety, ordered an end to hostilities in Chechnya and promised negotiations on a settlement in the region. The talks in Grozny followed two bloody, unsuccessful attempts to dislodge the hostage-takers from the Budennovsk hospital.

Zandak, where the last hostages were said to have been freed, lies near Mr Basayev's home town of Vedeno. Mr Basayev led failed Chechen attempts to keep the town, whose capture by Russian forces this month deprived the rebels of their last major base.

The fall of Vedeno led Mr Basayev to take the war into Russian proper. In a meticulously executed assault on Budennovsk, the Chechens seized the town and herded hundreds of people into the hospital.

The operation, which humiliated President Boris Yeltsin, forced Moscow to hold the first serious talks on Chechnya since the war began last December. In Moscow, Communist members of parliament began a drive to get Mr Yeltsin impeached. "Budennovsk is the last straw," said Viktor Ilyukhin, head of the parliament's security committee.

The region of Stavropol, where Budennovsk is located, issued a warrant for Mr Basayev's arrest. But Russia's Deputy Prime Minister, Oleg Soskovets, reaffirmed a promise by Mr Chernomyrdin that the rebels would be granted safe passage.