Moscow, July 13: Russia – Five suspected militants and two law enforcement officers were killed Monday in separate attacks in Russia’s violence-prone south, authorities said.
The militants were killed in two separate gunbattles in Chechnya, while Interior Ministry troops in Dagestan died in an ambush by insurgents, police said.
In one of the shootouts, two pedestrians opened fire on police who had stopped them for a document check in a central Chechen district. Police say both were shot dead.
Later, a special forces patrol attempted to stop a car they deemed suspicious. The car’s three occupants began shooting and were killed in the ensuing gunbattle.
Chechnya and the surrounding republics in the North Caucasus region are dogged by daily shootings, blasts and other violence linked to criminal gangs and separatist insurgents. The violence comes despite the end of a large-scale insurgency after two bloody wars in Chechnya in the 1990s.
In Dagestan, to the east of Chechnya, two Interior Ministry troops were killed and five were wounded when their trucks were ambushed by unidentified gunmen who opened fire and then fled into the forest, police said.
On Sunday, two special forces officers were hospitalized with shrapnel wounds in an explosion during a search in southeastern Chechnya, police said.
And in a separate incident Sunday in a tiny region bordering Chechnya, a police investigator’s house came under fire from submachine guns and grenade launchers, Russian news agencies reported. ITAR-Tass reported there were no casualties in the attack in Ingushetia, whose president was recovering in a Moscow clinic after an assassination attempt last month.
Chechnya’s top police officer claimed last week that an alleged Ingush militant leader named Magomed Yevloyev was behind the attack on the Ingush president, Yunus Bek Yevkurov.
Authorities in April announced the end of a federal counterterrorism operation that had been in force in Chechnya for about 10 years.
The counterterrorism operation led to curfews, limited access for journalists and restrictions on civilian airline flights, among other measures, and its withdrawal sent jubilant residents into the streets to celebrate.
Yet isolated attacks keep continuing — including the attempt on Yevkurov. Large numbers of troops are thought to have remained in Chechnya and the measures limiting public freedom remain in effect in certain districts.
—-Agencies