Shoot-outs kill five in Russia's Dagestan

Fri Jul 23, 2010 9:11pm BST

MOSCOW, July 23 (Reuters) - Five men including a village head were killed in separate shoot-outs in Russia's Dagestan region on Friday, Russian news agencies reported, dealing a blow to Kremlin efforts to contain an Islamist insurgency there.

Unidentified assailants gunned down Rasul Magomedov, the head of the Chernyaevka village in the north of the region, at 22:50 local time (18:50 GMT) outside his home, Interfax reported, citing police.

Attacks are launched near daily in the mainly Muslim North Caucasus, especially in Dagestan, Ingushetia and Chechnya, scene of two separatist wars with Moscow since the mid-1990s.

Earlier on Friday, a policeman was killed and four civilians wounded when gunmen opened fire at a bus in a nearby village, Interfax said. Three of the wounded were schoolchildren.

State-run RIA news agency reported that three military servicemen were killed in a gunbattle about 40 km (25 miles) southwest of Dagestan's capital Makhachkala.

Suspected Islamist militants shot dead two guards and blew up a power station in the nearby region of Kabardino-Balkaria on Wednesday, urging President Dmitry Medvedev to say he would sack top security officials if more such attacks took place.

Analysts said the attack on the hydroelectric plant shows rebels are fulfilling their promise to target economic infrastructure as part of their struggle to create an independent Islamic state in the Caucasus. (Reporting by Amie Ferris-Rotman; editing by Andrew Roche)



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