Makhachakala, Russia: Police and security forces besieged an apartment building in Russia's violence-plagued Dagestan region and killed three suspected militants, a law enforcement official said on Monday.
Authorities surrounded and evacuated the building on the outskirts of Dagestan's capital, Makhachkala, late Sunday and a gunbattle broke out after suspected rebels in a second-floor apartment refused to surrender, deputy city police chief Shamil Guseinov said. One police officer was wounded.
Firing
After a pause overnight, the government forces opened fire again in the morning. After a few hours, they entered the ruined apartment and found the bodies of three suspected militants, Guseinov said.
Authorities believe the suspected militants escaped capture during an operation last month in which security forces surrounded the mountain village of Gimry, the top Federal Security Service official in Dagestan, Vyacheslav Shenshin, said in televised comments.
Government assaults on homes where militants are believed to be holed up are common in Dagestan, a province in the restive North Caucasus that is troubled by violence linked to the separatist conflict in neighbouring Chechnya, to a police crackdown on Islamic militancy and to internal criminal disputes and power struggles.
In Chechnya, military troops and police searched for five to seven gunmen who attacked government forces in a forested area in the south late Sunday, killing one police officer and wounding another, the regional Interior Ministry said.
Also yesterday, a serviceman who was convicted of killing three Chechen civilians in 2003 but failed to appear for sentencing, has been added to the federal "wanted" list, said Yevgeny Zvyagin, an official of the top military court for the North Caucasus.
Yevgeny Khudyakov was one of two Interior Troops lieutenants stripped of their ranks after the conviction, and was sentenced to 17 years in prison. He did not turn up for his sentencing last month.
Government assaults on homes where militants are believed to be holed up are common in Dagestan that is troubled by violence linked to the separatist conflict in neighbouring Chechnya, to a police crackdown on militancy and to internal criminal disputes and power struggles.
