GROZNY, Russia -- Russian tanks and artillery battered Chechnya on Friday after an air attack on a village caught people by surprise during midday prayers, reportedly killing dozens.

　In Elistanzhi, a village in the mountains near Chechnya's southern border, the streets were filled with sobbing Friday as villagers collected body parts of the victims of the Russian air attack, eyewitnesses said.

　Villagers said Russian planes attacked Elistanzhi, 30 miles southeast of Grozny, on Thursday during midday Muslim prayers and kept up the bombardment for more than two hours.

　Village administrator Ismail Dagayev told The Associated Press that 32 people were killed - including an entire family of eight - 60 others injured and 200 houses destroyed.

　The Russian military on Friday declined to comment on the claims.

　Russia has said its attacks on Chechnya are aimed solely at Islamic militants who twice invaded the neighboring republic of Dagestan this summer and who are blamed for a series of September apartment explosions in Russia that killed 300 people.

　But Chechen officials charge that hundreds of civilians have been killed, and Elistanzhi residents echoed the complaints, saying the village never housed militants.

　"We just live here, growing potatoes, corn and tobacco," said village mullah Yusup Khadzhi.

　The air attack came after 40 people were reportedly killed Tuesday when a Russian tank fired on a bus crowded with men, women and children trying to flee Chechnya.

　The sounds of heavy shelling were heard Friday near the villages of Bamut and Arshty along Chechnya's western border with Ingushetia as Russian forces established positions inside the rebel republic.

　Russia says it wants a security zone around Chechnya to keep militants from infiltrating neighboring regions. Russian troops occupy the northern third of the republic, which is relatively flat and has open ground, and have not crossed into the woods and mountains south of the Terek River.

　The Russian commander in Chechnya, Col. Gen. Viktor Kazaktsev, told The Associated Press that troops "definitely plan" to cross the Terek, but he declined to say when.

　In the 1994-96 war in Chechnya, outnumbered Chechen fighters fought the vast Russian army to a humiliating standstill in devastating street battles in Grozny and guerrilla actions in the hills.

　Russia says its losses in the latest fighting have been relatively light. Col. Gen. Valery Manilov, deputy chief of the Russian general staff, said Friday that 20 to 30 soldiers have been killed.

　The end of the war in 1996 left Chechnya technically still part of Russia, but effectively independent. Chechens elected a president and parliament in 1997. The Kremlin now refuses to regard the Chechen government as legitimate and instead recognizes a newly organized Chechen State Council, formed by Russian authorities and members of a largely pro-Russian Chechen parliament that was elected in 1996.

　The head of the council, Malik Saidullayev, claimed at a Friday news conference in Moscow that his body would prevail over the government of Chechen President Aslen Maskhadov.

　"All parents, mothers, fathers will follow us; all the people who have children and who want these children to have a happy future," he said.

　The streets of the capital, Grozny, which had been nearly deserted earlier in the week, were busy Friday with residents shopping for food and discussing Moscow's formation of a government-in-exile for Chechnya. Many saw the council as a puppet government.

　Maskhadov, in comments published Friday in Russia's Kommersant newspaper, said another full-scale war in Chechnya would again result "in Russia's shame and defeat" and he urged Moscow to seek a peaceful solution.

　Russia has informed the United States it has violated an international conventional arms agreement by sending more armored equipment to southern Russia in its battle against Chechen rebels than the accord permits.

　The 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe agreement limits the number of tanks, artillery pieces, aircraft and other non-nuclear arms in Europe, with specific ceilings for particular regions.

　Meanwhile, the refugee flow from Chechnya to neighboring Ingushetia has topped 133,000, but food, tents and other vital supplies are still lacking, according to the territory's leader, President Ruslan Aushev. Thousands more have fled to other regions.

　 (the Washington Post)