MAKHACHKALA, August 29 (RIA Novosti) - Two suspected militants have been killed in the Russian North Caucasus republic of Dagestan, the Interior Ministry reported.
“According to preliminary information, two members of an illegal armed unit were killed in Dagestan’s [western] Tsumadinsky District at about 4 p.m. Moscow Time [1200 GMT],” a ministry spokesman told RIA Novosti on Wednesday.
Russia’s National Antiterrorism Committee reported Wednesday that the suspects had been involved in an attempt to blow up a truck with law enforcement officers and an attack on a policeman’s house.
Attacks on security forces, police and civilians occur regularly in the North Caucasus, generated by ethnic, religious and political rivalries, as well as poverty and corruption. The violence is also fed by an Islamist insurgency, which has been especially resilient in Dagestan and fueled a series of bloody post-Soviet separatist wars in the neighboring republic of Chechnya.
