MOSCOW, August 14 (RIA Novosti) - Four police officers were killed and another four injured in an operation to detain two militants in a town near Chechnya's capital, a police official said on Friday.
He also said the militants, who have not yet been identified, were killed in the shootout in the town of Kerla-Yurt late on Thursday.
Five soldiers were also injured on Thursday in a separate shootout in the volatile republic's Urus-Martan district, southwest of the capital, Grozny, a police source said.
While Moscow formally ended its decade-long antiterrorism operation in the North Caucasus republic in mid-April, violence has increased in recent months.
Chechnya and nearby regions in Russia's mainly Muslim North Caucasus experience daily shootouts, bombings and other attacks on troops, police and officials. The republic saw two brutal separatist wars in the 1990s and early 2000s.
