Russian troops killed at least 10 Islamist militants in the North Caucasus in the past two days in two operations in the mainly Muslim region, Russian media said today.
Troops killed five fighters holed up in a block of flats in the restive region of Kabardino-Balkaria. Five others were killed in an operation that began two days ago in the neighbouring Caspian Sea province of Dagestan, the reports said.
ITAR-TASS news agency said a special police forces officer was killed in the Dagestan clash and, elsewhere in the province, a regional election official was fatally wounded by intruders at his home overnight.
The state-run news agency RIA and the television channel Rossiya 24 said the fighters in Kabardino-Balkaria, besieged overnight in a five-storey residential building in the capital Nalchik, were suspected of carrying out attacks on police.
The region of Kabardino-Balkaria has been largely untouched in recent years by the spreading violence in the North Caucasus but there has been an increase in clashes with police in the past few weeks.
ITAR-TASS also quoted a police spokesman as saying that five rebels were killed in the Dagestan operation and police were still pursuing a further 10 in a forest.
Local media said Suleiman Gadzhimuradov, head of the election commission in the Novolaksky region of Dagestan, died in hospital from wounds he suffered when he was shot in the chest at his home by several intruders overnight.
Media reports quoting the National Anti-Terrorism Committee said the Dagestan rebels were members of a group behind two suicide attacks on the Moscow metro in March in which 40 people were killed.
Earlier this month, the committee said the body of Magomed-Ali Vagabov, who Russian authorities say orchestrated the metro attacks, was found in the wreckage of a house stormed by security forces in Dagestan.
The Kremlin is struggling to contain a spreading Islamist insurgency in the mainly Muslim North Caucasus, which is plagued by corruption and poverty.
Attacks have spread this month from the regions bordering Chechnya, where clashes have continued on and off for years, towards the Black Sea resort region of Sochi, site of the 2014 Olympics.
Reuters