A Russian helicopter was downed by a missile in Chechnya on Saturday, killing two, officials said. The crash came less than two weeks after a transport helicopter was brought down by a missile in the deadliest surface-to-air attack against Russian forces fighting Chechen nationalist forces. The Mi-24 helicopter was shot down by a missile near the village of Meskety in southeastern Chechnya, a Defense Ministry spokesman told The Associated Press. It was one of two Mi-24 combat helicopters flying with an Mi-8 transport helicopter, he said. The helicopter's two pilots were killed, he said.

Nikolai Deryabin, the ministry's chief spokesman, told the Interfax news agency that the two Mi-24's were accompanying the Mi-8 as it made food deliveries to units operating in mountainous parts of Chechnya.

On Aug. 19, a huge Mi-26 transport helicopter crashed on its way to the military headquarters in Khankala, Chechnya, killing 118. On Friday, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said there were "no doubts" a missile caused the fiery crash. That crash was the worst military aviation catastrophe in Russian history and the largest single loss of life among the troops fighting in Chechnya.

Meanwhile, Russian forces killed three Chechen nationalist fighters using special equipment designed to explode remote-controlled land mines as they are being set, a news agency reported Saturday.

Citing security officials in Grozny, the Chechen capital, the ITAR-Tass news agency said that three Chechen fighters were killed over the past 24 hours using the equipment, which is dubbed "Anti-Terrorist."

Remote-controlled mines set by Chechen fighters are responsible for many of the daily casualties among Russian forces in Chechnya. Military officials have said the specially developed Anti-Terrorist equipment would help combat this fighters' tactic but have given no details about how it works.

On Friday, a mine killed two riot police officers in a military truck and wounded five near the village of Valerik in the Urus-Martan district, an official in the Moscow-appointed Chechen administration said.

The Anti-Terrorist device was used in the Shali district, ITAR-Tass said. The device caused the remote-controlled mines to detonate immediately, killing each of the fighters. The explosion was so powerful that it was impossible to identify the fighters, the agency said.

Also in the Shali district, Chechen fighters clashed with riot police near the village of Avtury, killing one and wounding one, the administration official said on condition of anonymity.

Elsewhere in Chechnya, fighters fired on Russian positions 10 times in the past 24 hours, killing four and wounding three.
Two servicemen were killed when their jeep came under Chechen fire in the village of Tsai-Vedeno, the official said.

About 120 people were detained in security sweeps in the Urus-Martan and Achkoi-Martan districts and in the outskirts of Grozny, the official said.

The current conflict in Chechnya began nearly three years ago after a period of de facto independence following a 1994-96 war. Russian troops returned to the region after fighters based in Chechnya raided a neighboring Russian region. Russian officials also blamed the fighters for a series of apartment house bombings that killed more than 300 people in three cities.

PHOTO CAPTION

Russian servicemen who survived the Mil-26 transport helicopter crash sleep in the military hospital in Rostov, August 22, 2002. An overcrowded Mil-26 helicopter crashed on Monday near Russia's heavily-guarded Khankala base in the breakaway republic of Chechnya, killing more than 100 servicemen out of 147 people on board. Russia observed a day of national mourning on Thursday for those killed in the crash. REUTERS/Str