MAKHACHKALA, August 8 (RIA Novosti) - A policeman was shot dead by unidentified assailants on early Thursday in the city of Khasavyurt, in Russia’s North Caucasus republic of Dagestan, a local police spokesman said.
“At approximately 1:00 a.m. [Thursday] unknown suspects opened gun fire on a police officer. He died at the scene of sustained wounds,” the spokesman said.
Investigators work at the scene of crime to establish the details of the attack, the spokesman added.
Attacks on security forces, police and civilians occur regularly in Dagestan and are understood to be generated by ethnic, religious and political rivalries, as well as poverty and corruption.
The violence is also fed by an Islamist insurgency, which originated in the neighboring republic of Chechnya after a series of bloody post-Soviet separatist wars, and has spread across the North Caucasus in recent years.
