According to accounts from survivors, a refugee convoy consisting of about 50 people in seven or eight passenger cars and one bus marked with white flags, was heading towards the border with the Russian republic of Ingushetia, when they approached a federal roadblock near the village of Goyty.
One survivor described masked OMON[1] troops opening fire with automatic rifles from their position in the nearby forest without warning.
[2] After the shooting, Russian soldiers gave first aid and painkillers to the handful of survivors and brought them to the hospital in Ordzhonikidzevskaya, Ingushetia, where journalists interviewed them.
[2][3] The incident happened just a few miles from a major battle at the crossroads of Urus-Martan, which sits astride a road that Chechen militants were using as a supply line.
Officials were quoted as saying that 30 vehicles were destroyed on roads leading out of Grozny, but that all the cars contained rebels, not civilians.