Chechen terrorists probed

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U.S. security officials are investigating a recent intelligence report that a group of 25 Chechen terrorists illegally entered the United States from Mexico in July.

The Chechen group is suspected of having links to Islamist terrorists seeking to separate the southern enclave of Chechnya from Russia, according to officials familiar with intelligence reports.

Members of the group, said to be wearing backpacks, secretly traveled to northern Mexico and crossed into a mountainous part of Arizona that is difficult for U.S. border security agents to monitor, said officials speaking on the condition of anonymity.

The intelligence report was supplied to the U.S. government in late August or early September and was based on information from an intelligence source that has been proved reliable in other instances, one official said.

A second U.S. official said the report is being investigated, but said it could not be determined whether the group of Chechens actually entered the country, as the intelligence source reported.

"We don't know whether or not that report is true," this official said.

A spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection confirmed that the intelligence report was provided by another government agency, but said Border Patrol agents were unable to verify its accuracy.

It could not be learned whether the reported infiltration is related to the recent Education Department warning to school officials to examine security in the aftermath of the attack last month by pro-Chechnya Muslim terrorists on a school in Russia, in which more than 300 people were killed and some 700 wounded.

In the Russian attack, heavily armed Islamists took over and wired with explosives the school building in Beslan, North Ossetia. It is believed that an accidental explosion set off a battle between Russian security personnel and the terrorists, who set off several explosions and shot schoolchildren and teachers as they tried to escape.

U.S. officials believe the Beslan terrorists included some al Qaeda-linked foreign terrorists.