Moscow ? The head of the Moscow-backed Chechen administration said Friday that so many people were disappearing in the republic, possibly seized by Russian servicemen or police, that he’s ashamed to look his people in the eye.

Akhmad Kadyrov’s statement underlined the fear tearing at the fabric of the republic in the midst of an intensified Russian crackdown and the delicacy of his own position ” answerable both to the Kremlin and to suffering Chechens.

After last month’s seizure by Chechen rebels of hundreds of hostages at a Moscow theater, Russian forces in Chechnya have stepped up the widely hated “mopping-up” operations in which villages are sealed off while troops search for suspected rebels and collaborators.

Throughout the war, now in its fourth year, Chechens and human rights groups have denounced the operations, saying troops summarily kill some of the people they seize, spirit away others ” whose corpses are occasionally found months later ” commit rapes and loot houses.

“Nine people have been taken away from my native village of Tsentoroi this week and it’s impossible to find out where they are now. I can’t look my fellow villagers in the eye,” Kadyrov said, according to the news agency Interfax.

Kadyrov, although seen by many Chechens as a lapdog of the Kremlin, has become increasingly critical of the Russian campaign to wipe out separatist rebels.

Still, his remarks Friday stopped short of open accusations. He said people were taken away “in the night, by unknown armed individuals,” raising the possibility that some were seized by separatists, who often act brutally against people they believe sympathize with Russia.

At least 220 people were detained by Russian forces over the past 24 hours, an official in the Kremlin-backed Chechen administration said Friday.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, also said 12 Russian servicemen and allied Chechen militiamen were killed in the previous day.

After the end of large-scale offensives in 2000, the Chechen war became locked in a pattern of small clashes, hit-and-run attacks and land mine blasts that kill five to 10 Russian servicemen a day.

Russian forces withdrew from Chechnya in 1996 after rebels fought them to a standstill in a 20-month war, but swept in again in September 1999 after Chechnya-based insurgents made incursions into neighboring Dagestan and after some 300 people died in apartment bombings that officials blamed on the rebels.