Human Rights Watch warned that Russian soldiers were...

Human Rights Watch warned that Russian soldiers were carrying out human rights abuses in Chechnya despite a controversial referendum in March that Moscow said would bring peace to breakaway republic. "The armed conflict in Chechnya continues and humanitarian law violations appear to be increasing," the group said in a new report published ahead of an upcoming UN Human Rights Commission meeting on Chechnya. The human rights watchdog said it found that Russian troops had abducted at least 26 people between late December 2002 and late February 2003, marking "the highest rate of 'disappearances' Human Rights Watch has documented since the beginning of the conflict" in October 1999. The report also condemned Russian authorities for "the disturbing new trend" of blowing up bodies instead of dumping them into mass graves in a bid to cover up abuses. "Russian forces increasingly resort to blowing up the bodies of executed Chechens -- a crude ploy that eradicates signs of torture, obscures the cause of death and makes identification of the corpse extremely difficult," it said.