MOSCOW, June 29 (RIA Novosti) – One police officer has been killed and 13 injured during a shootout with militants in the Shatoi district of the North Caucasus Republic of Chechnya, local police said Saturday.
“As the result of a military clash one police officer died of his wounds on arriving in hospital,” said a statement released by the Chechen Interior Ministry; a further 13 police officers were hospitalized, 6 with gunshot wounds.
Police are currently conducting an operation in the mountainous and heavily forested Shatoi district to destroy militant groups, according to the statement. Two Russian soldiers were killed by an unidentified explosive blast in the area in April.
Chechnya suffered a series of bloody separatist wars in the 1990s, but in recent years an Islamic insurgency has largely migrated to neighboring regions in the face of an ironfisted Chechen government headed by Ramzan Kadyrov.
