GROZNY -- Rebel fighters seized government buildings and the hospital in Chechnya's second city Gudermes on Friday, launching a fierce battle against Russian armor and helicopter gunships even as the first votes were cast in the republic's elections.


As the worst fighting since the military disengagement was signed last June raged in Gudermes, the elections got underway in relative calm in nearby Grozny and other Russian-held parts of the republic.


But with smoke rising over Gudermes on Thursday evening and the city sealed off, the violence does not bode well for the effectiveness of elections that were designed by Moscow to legitimize the friendly government in Grozny as an alternative to that of Chechnya's separatist president, Dzhokhar Dudayev.


Precise casualty fig a further 30 reported missing.


"This is a provocation, an attempt to disrupt the peace process and to prevent elections to the State Duma and for the head of the republic," Itar-Tass quoted a statement by the Russian military as saying. It added that "all measures will be taken to rebuff the provocation."


Russian reinforcements were sent into Gudermes and helicopters and artillery were bombarding rebel positions in the outskirts, Interfax said. But after several hours of intense fighting, the greater part of Gudermes had been seized by forces loyal to Dudayev.


The fighting started after some 40 rebels occupied the regional hospital in Gudermes, 30 kilometers east of Grozny, early Thursday morning, taking the deputy chief surgeon hostage. The patients were reported to have been evacuated. Later a separate Chechen force captured the railroad station and the military commandant's office, Interfax said.


The Chechen election commission said Thursday that polling was started early, partly for soldiers who are away from their bases and partly to give people more time in case voting is disrupted for security reasons. The polls would stay open for four days. Some analysts have suggested that Moscow was hoping by extending the polls to ensure a high enough turn-out for the elections, which have been condemned by Dudayev.


"People are scared and there could be a provocation," Tatyana Pasko, 49, secretary of the commission said. "The polling stations will be open from 8:00 until 15:00 every day."


Her office had just received a telephone call from election officials in the Itum Kale district, high in the mountains of southern Chechnya. "They said the situation was fine and voting was going ahead," Pasko said.


In Grozny, voting appeared orderly and even brisk. Opposite the government building at polling station 12, voters jostled in a small room to gather the three ballot papers to choose a new leader of Chechnya, as well as local candidates and national parties in State Duma elections.


Dark curtains sealed off four voting booths. An armed policeman sat by a large ballot box covered in satin cloth and sealed with white tape. More armed police stood around outside the building.


Most of the voters were government employees who work in the surrounding offices, and all those asked said they were voting for the present prime minister, Doku Zavgayev, who is widely expected to win the leadership election.


"He knows the government structure, he understands how to manage the economy," said Malika Salgiriyev, the wife of an army officer and herself a former government worker.


At the end of the street, police said sniffer dogs had just discovered explosives in a car parked just meters from their checkpoint and 100 meters from the administration building of the Moscow-installed government.


The security services have been on alert since a huge car bomb exploded outside the building last week, killing at least a dozen people and injuring scores more. No one claimed responsibility for the attack, which was widely seen as the start of a campaign of violence leading up to the elections.


Rebel commander Shamil Basayev, the leader of the June siege of the south Russian town of Budyonnovsk, said he would use force if necessary to wreck the elections. Dudayev himself has pledged to seek only non-violent solutions to Chechnya's problems.











Separatist leaders have vowed to disrupt the polls, saying they should be postponed until after the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya.