Russian security forces said they killed 10 suspected rebels in clashes in the restive southern region of Dagestan today, state-run news agencies reported.
Fighting between rebels and security services was continuing on the outskirts of the regional capital Makhachkala and in the nearby port of Kaspiysk, the RIA and Itar-Tass news agencies reported, citing the Federal Security Service (FSB).
"A group of rebels were surrounded. When asked to surrender they opened fire," an official in the FSB's anti-terror committee of told ITAR-TASS. An FSB spokesman contacted by Reuters declined immediate comment.
An insurgency is raging across the mainly Muslim region, where poverty has helped foster an armed campaign to carve out an independent state governed by Islamic law.
A decade after separatists were driven from power in the second of two wars in Chechnya, adjacent to Dagestan, the North Caucasus is plagued by near-daily clashes between law-enforcement agencies and Islamist rebels.
Reuters