Some 10,000 locals were killed in two Chechen campaigns - PM of Chechnya

 
MOSCOW. Oct 22 (Interfax) - No more than 10,000 people were killed in the two military campaigns in Chechnya (1994-1996 and 1999-2002), Chechen Prime Minister Stanislav Ilyasov said.

"There is no reason to talk about big losses. A maximum of 10,000 people were killed," Ilyasov told Interfax, referring to Western media reports.

Ilyasov explained that this conclusion is based on information obtained by the census in Chechnya.

"All the documentation has already been forwarded to the State Statistics Committee, and the figures have been checked," he said.

The aggregate population of today's Ingushetia and Chechnya cannot be directly compared with information on the population of the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of 1989.

"On the one hand, the period since that time has been marked by the collapse of the Soviet Union and global migration processes: many people have left Chechnya, and many people have entered it. Demographic processes have also influenced the census results: an increase in the birth rate and the preservation of polygamy," Interfax was told.

Ilyasov said that generally-accepted statistical methods should be used. "We now have some 220,000 schoolchildren and over 100,000 pensioners. In any country, the number of old people and children is estimated as one-third of the population. Therefore, the ultimate number of people turned up by the census looks quite probable," Ilyasov said.