Moscow - Groups of heavily-armed men attacked a Russian tank unit and a police post near the rebel Chechnya region, killing a police officer and wounding four servicemen. "The terrorist action in Dagestan, starting with an attack on a tank battalion in Buinaksk on Sunday night, seems to have been widely spread and planned," Mr Andrei Chernenko, chief spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said yesterday.
The attackers, operating in groups of eight to 10 people each, used assault rifles, machine guns and grenade launchers. They fired on two tanks and several cars and destroyed a store of fuel in the attack. Two Russian servicemen were reported injured and another soldier was missing.
Two of the attackers had been captured while the rest of the group, numbering around 15, then seized a bus full of civilians, mainly women. They let them go but kept two policemen and two civilians as human shields, he said, adding that they were surrounded by Russian troops.
Interfax news agency said most of the group had broken through the border into Chechnya with the hostages. A civilian had been killed when the gunmen seized his car.