Related information: Chechnya

Recent Chechen History:

October 1991: Chechen president Dzhokhar Dudayev declares Chechen independence in defiance of Russia.

December 1994: Russia sends troops to crush a post-Communist drive for independence.

1996: Russia negotiates peace with rebels and withdraws.

January 1997: Former Soviet colonel Aslan Maskhadov elected Chechen president.

1999: Chechen guerillas invade Russian republic of Dagestan. Nearly 300 people killed in Moscow and other cities in a series of blasts. Russian froces return to region.

August 2002: Rebel missile brings down military helicopter killing 118 Russians.

October 2002: 129 hostages and 41 Chechen guerillas killed when Russian troops storm a Moscow theatre where rebels had taken 700 hostages.

2003: More than 250 people killed across Russia and Chechnya in waves of suicide bombings.

February 6, 2004: Suicide bombing kills at least 40 people on an underground train in Moscow.

May 9, 2004: Blast at a stadium in the Chechen capital, Grozny, kills President Ahmad Kadyrov and 13 others.

June 22, 2004: Rebels seize interior ministry in Ingushetia, and attack other key points killing at least 92 people.

August 24, 2004: Near simultaneous crashes of two Russian passnger planes raise fears of renewed terrorist attacks by Chechen separatists.

September 4, 2004: More than 300 hostages, most of them children, killed at a school in Beslan, North Ossetia where they were being held by terrorists demanding Cechen independence. When one of the terrorists' bombs exploded in the school, hostages attempted to escape and were fired upon by their captors. More than 20 terrorists killed.