Hundreds of Trans-Dniestrian para-military troops captured a Moldovan village on Friday taking two policemen captive and destroying a telephone exchange, according to a Friday Infotag news agency report. The report amends an earlier report that indicated that only a squad of troops entering the village of Vasilevka, located on the left bank of the Dniestr river and so technically on the Trans- Dniestrian side of the unofficial border between Trans-Dniestr and Moldova. Russian-speaking Trans-Dniestr seceded from Romanian-speaking Moldova after a civil war ending in 1992. Vasilevka village is under Moldovan administration. An estimated 200-man company of masked Trans-Dniestrian para-military police armed with automatic rifles and backed up by an armoured personnel carrier surrounded and then entered Vasilevka village early Friday morning, Moldovan government officials said. The Trans-Dniestrians immediately took captive two Moldovan village policemen guarding the phone exchange. The Moldovans did not resist, the report said. --More 2300 Local Time 2000 GMT
