Security raid leaves several dead

Makhachkala, Russia (AP):

A security raid in the Russian province of Dagestan near Chechnya has left six suspected militants, a police officer and a child dead, while another policeman was killed in a separate attack, officials said yesterday.

Vyacheslav Gasanov, a spokesman for the Russian Interior Ministry's branch in the region, said police encircled the suspects in a house in the village of Kirov-aul in western Dagestan on Sunday. The militants refused to surrender and were killed in a gun battle that also left one policeman dead. Gasanov said that a nine-year-old boy was killed by a stray bullet.

In a separate attack late Sunday in Khasavyurt town, just east of the administrative border with Chechnya, an unidentified gunman shot and killed a police officer at a café, Gasanov said. Also Sunday, a policeman opened fire at a vehicle whose driver tried to avoid a check of identity papers. A passenger of another vehicle was wounded by a stray bullet, Gasanov said.

Dagestan and nearby provinces in Russia's North Caucasus suffer near-daily violence linked to an Islamic insurgency that spread across the region after two separatist wars in neighbouring Chechnya.