They wantonly opened fire or threw grenades into basements where residents, mostly women, elderly persons and children, had been hiding.
[2] The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) forces (identified as Sofrinskaya Brigade of the Internal Troops, Moscow Oblast OMON and Orenburg SOBR, some Moscow policemen and possibly members of the elite counter-terrorist unit Vityaz) began an operation to "mop up" the village (zachistka - an intense search of the streets, house-by-house) on April 7, in the area around the train station, and then, on April 8, through the entire village.
[10] Despite claims by Russian military sources, armed resistance in Samashki was not of an organized nature, as the main Chechen rebel forces left the village following the Russian ultimatum by Generals Antonov, Kulikov and Romanov, ending on April 6, 1995, to hand over the 264 automatic weapons supposedly present in Samashki (the villagers had handed in 11 automatic weapons).
Before the ultimatum, Samashki had already been under siege for a prolonged period of time, and several failed storming attempts by the Russian forces had been undertaken since the beginning of the war in December 1994.
Nevertheless, a lightly armed village militia of some 40 self-defense fighters, all of them local residents, resisted the MVD and fighting ensued.
The Information Telegraph Agency of Russia quoted Vladimir Vorozhtsov, chief spokesman of the regional Russian command, as denying any large number of civilian casualties.
Their minimum estimate of the general number of deceased was 112–144 people (in 2008, Memorial leader Oleg Orlov, who went into Samashki soon after the events of April 7–8, said he saw nearly 150 dead bodies), including some ethnic Russian residents.
The victims, which included elderly Chechen World War II (WWII) veterans and at least three (four according to the Ingush commission[18]) ethnic Russians,[19] were usually executed by shooting at close range or killed with grenades in the basements, but some were beaten to death.
The killings and the round-up were accompanied by widespread arbitrary and wanton destruction of property by Russian troops, as well as numerous reports of theft and pillaging.
A Chechen surgeon, Khassan Baiev, treated wounded in Samashki immediately after the operation and described the scene in his book:[22]Dozens of charred corpses of women and children lay in the courtyard of the mosque, which had been destroyed.
Leaving the village for the hospital in Grozny, I passed a Russian armored personnel carrier with the word SAMASHKI written on its side in bold, black letters.
"[24] At around the time of the incident, Russian President Boris Yeltsin compared the Chechens to the Nazis during the 50th anniversary of the Soviet Union's victory in World War II.
[17] Member of the State Duma Anatoly Shabad [ru], who was smuggled to the village by Chechen women,[27] compared the Russian troops to Nazi extermination squads: "What happened there was a large-scale punitive operation aimed at destroying the population.
"[21][24] The head of the Department of Caucasian Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences Sergei Arutiunov [ru] compared the massacre to that of "Khatyn in Belarus, Lidice in Czechoslovakia" and said that the name Samashki "sounds more sinister than My Lai in Vietnam.
Several other villages through Chechnya made bilateral truces with the Russians and asked the Chechen separatist forces to leave, although they secretly kept supporting Dudayev's government.