MOSCOW, January 18 (RIA Novosti) – Four militants have been killed during an operation in the capital of Russia’s troubled North Caucasus republic of Dagestan, security officials said Saturday.
Three men and one woman were killed by Russian security forces following a siege in the Dagestani capital of Makhachkala, Russia’s Anti-terrorism Committee said in a statement.
The killings follow a car bomb blast and grenade launcher attack on a restaurant in Makhachkala on Friday. Investigators said Saturday that at least 16 people, including several police officers, were injured in the incident.
Violence is an almost daily occurence in the North Caucasus, a region which is just a few hundred miles from the resort town of Sochi where Russia will next month host the Winter Olympics.
The four people killed Saturday included one local militant leader and the widow of a dead militant who was preparing for a suicide attack, according to the Anti-terrorism Committee.
Other Russian media reports quoted security officials as suggesting that the four dead people had been linked to the attack on the Makhachkala restaurant the evening before.
Russian security officials often announce the prompt killing of those allegedly responsible for attacks in the North Caucasus, but such reports are almost impossible to verify independently.
The persistent violence in the North Caucasus is fuelled by endemic poverty and corruption, as well as ethnic divisions, and an ongoing Islamist insurgency.
Islamist fighters, once confined largely to Chechnya, have spread across the North Caucasus in recent years, and are frequently linked to the attacks on security forces, police and civilians that are reported regularlyin the nearby republics of Dagestan, Ingushetia and Kabardino-Balkaria.
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