Russian Troops Intervene in North Ossetian Fighting : Caucasus: Regional conflict is first serious ethnic strife in country since Soviet collapse.

MOSCOW —  Russia’s defense minister flew to the North Ossetia region Thursday to assess the first serious ethnic fighting on the nation’s soil, and Russian troops moved in to disarm rival factions.

Russian troops entered several villages in the strife-torn southern region seeking to force Ossetian and Ingush militiamen to stop a bloody fight over territory in the Caucasus Mountains, the Itar-Tass news agency said.

The North Ossetian Health Ministry said 115 people had been killed and 272 wounded since the fighting began Saturday. It was the latest warfare to rack the republics of the former Soviet Union since its collapse. Regions in Georgia and Azerbaijan also have become battlegrounds over ethnic hostilities, some of which go back centuries.

Russian Defense Minister Gen. Pavel S. Grachev arrived in North Ossetia’s capital, Vladikavkaz, where he met with Russian military commanders and the North Ossetian Security Council to get a firsthand report on the situation, Itar-Tass said.

On Wednesday, journalists saw heavily armed Ossetians attack a nearby Ingush village, shooting and burning homes and forcing townspeople to flee.

The Ingush, who are Sunni Muslims, claim the Prigorodny region of North Ossetia as their historic homeland. They held the region until Josef Stalin accused them of Nazi collaboration and deported them to Kazakhstan and Siberia during World War II.

The Ingush were allowed to return home in the 1950s. About 100,000 now live in North Ossetia and what used to be called Chechen-Ingushetia, which last year was broken into two regions called Chechenia and Ingushetia.

About 400,000 Ossetians, mostly Orthodox Christians, also live in the Caucasus, primarily in North and South Ossetia, their traditional homeland that was divided between Russia and Georgia by Stalin.

Russian army paratroopers and Interior Ministry troops moved into villages acting under a monthlong state of emergency declared by Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin.

Russian Vice Premier Georgy Khiza, the temporary administrator of North Ossetia and Ingushetia, ordered the troops in after a cease-fire agreement that was to have taken effect at 8 p.m. Wednesday. Fighting was reported throughout the night, however.

The Russian troops were instructed to seize weapons from illegally armed militiamen and to monitor the exchange of prisoners of war, hostages and wounded fighters, Itar-Tass said.

Yeltsin’s state of emergency also bans political rallies, allows searches of vehicles and people, tightens security at factories and takes control of broadcasting facilities and newspapers.