Russian forces kill two militants

Russian security forces and police killed two militants and detained a third after the gunmen holed up in a house on the outskirts of the southern city of Nazran, police said today. Two women and six children were wounded.

The firefight broke out last night after security forces surrounded the house, where distant relatives of one of the militants lived, said a duty officer with the Ingush regional police department.

The Interfax news agency quoted a Federal Security Service spokesman, Major General Ilya Shabalkin, as saying that the militants opened fire after being ordered to lay down their weapons.

The house was reduced to splintered planks in the fighting, which neighbours said was intense.

The duty officer said the women and children had light shrapnel wounds and were hospitalised in Nazran, the capital of the Ingushetia region bordering on Chechnya.

Shabalkin said one of the attackers who was killed, Magomed Khashiyev, had led a criminal group directed by radical Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev, Interfax reported.

Khashiyev had taken part in an overnight series of attacks on police posts in Nazran in June, in which 90 people were killed, Shabalkin said.