MAKHACHKALA, November 15 (RIA Novosti) – Two police officers were killed on Thursday when unknown assailants opened fire on them in the Russian North Caucasus republic of Dagestan, a regional Interior Ministry spokesman said.
The attack occurred on a road in northern Dagestan. One policeman died immediately, and the other died later in a hospital, the spokesman told RIA Novosti. An investigation is under way.
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.
