Five members of a criminal gang were killed after special forces thwarted a robbery attempt in the town of Khimki near Moscow in the early hours of Wednesday, police said.
“Today, at about 3.20 am Moscow time [23:20 GMT, Tuesday], an attempt to carry out an armed robbery at a storage facility took place,” Moscow region police spokesman Yevgeny Gildeyev told RIA Novosti.
“Special forces were aware of the crime that had been prepared, so they laid an ambush,” he added.
The five gang members were killed in a shootout, Gildeyev said, adding that they “showed very strong resistance to police.”
Three other gang members have been detained, he said. They face up to life in prison if found guilty of robbery and attempting to kill a police officer, he added.
A police officer was lightly wounded in the shootout, Gildeyev said, adding that both police and Federal Security Service officers took part in the operation.
The police are studying video from outdoor surveillance cameras, which filmed the gang's raid, a spokesman from the regional Interior Ministry said. “Law enforcement officials hope to restore the complete picture of what happened from the video,” the spokesman said.
“The detainees at the moment are either in shock or under drugs,” the Interior Ministry spokesman said.
According to preliminary data, all the gang members were originally from Russia’s North Caucasus republics. The gang was also responsible for "a number of other grave crimes in the Moscow Region," a police source told RIA Novosti.
