PERVOMAISKOYE, Chechnya -- Stunned and shaken, families in the village of Pervomaiskoye emerged Thursday morning from their cellars after sheltering all afternoon and night from shelling by an advancing Russian tank column.


Heavy morning fog hung over the settlement 14 kilometers northwest of Grozny but lifted as the sun came out, revealing damaged houses, their roofs blasted empty frames.


"They bombed with airplanes and heavy artillery yesterday. This morning too, although no planes have come over yet," said Baisa Dostayeva, 42, a mother of four.


Demonstrating the impact of warfare on civilians, she gestured at the house across the street, which was hit during the night.


"They are like occupiers, like the Nazi Germans," she said referring to the Russian troops.


Her husband was fighting at the front. "We are not asking for Moscow or Siberia, we just want our homeland."


Two frightened old men sought refuge in her small unheated cellar, candle-light glinting on the pots of preserves around the walls. They had no cellar of their own, they said.


"I wish to God we had never seen this," said Jemli Mogamadov, 77. "But we have never had a quiet life."


He and his friend, Movlad Hamidov, 80, had been among the half-million Chechen and Ingush deported to Kazakhstan in 1944. They were only allowed to return home in 1958, they said.


"You cannot expect any good from them," Mogamadov said of the Russians.


One woman arrived from Grozny, sobbing hysterically. She was terrified that her father, not at their home in the city, had been killed. But they all remained firm in their desire for independence and self-determination despite the shelling.


Asked if it would not be better to disarm and agree to Moscow's terms, Dostayeva said, "If we did that, the same would happen -- there would be searches, arrests and looting."


She ushered her children back into the dark cellar as sounds of shelling broke the morning lull.


A few kilometers away in Elektropripor on the edge of the capital, two artillery shells had landed amid apartment buildings beside the main road. Women and children said they had no warning, although they heard shelling all night.


Shrapnel tore chunks out of the building nearest the shell crater. More lay on the main road 100 yards away.


Several Russian families came out of the communal cellar, angry, frightened and bewildered. "I have never been so scared in my life," one old woman said.


Tanya Yemelina, 40, a blond Russian with two children, said, "It is our own (Russian troops) who are killing here."


They had no water, no electricity, no gas. There was nothing in the local shops, they said, and no bread for three days.


All those who could leave had gone, they said. "I have nowhere to go," Yemelina said. "All I have is my two children, nothing else. Everything I have is here."