MAKHACHKALA, September 3 (RIA Novosti) – Three officers were killed when unknown assailants opened fire on a police squad in Makhachkala, the capital of the Russian North Caucasus republic of Dagestan, an Interior Ministry spokesman said Tuesday.
Two policemen died on the site, and a third succumbed to his injuries on the way to a hospital, the spokesman said, adding that the attackers escaped in a black Lada Priora car.
Attacks on security forces, police officers 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.
