Authorities in the southern Russian republic of Dagestan say security forces have killed five suspected militants who opened fire on police during a traffic stop.
A police statement said the shootout near the border with Chechnya in the town of Khasavyurt occurred late Tuesday. The statement identified the militants as males in their 20s and early 30s, and said automatic weapons and munitions were recovered at the scene.
Dagestan is part of Russia's volatile North Caucasus, a mostly-Muslim region where separatists and Russian forces fought two devastating wars in the 1990s. Shootings and bombings in the region are a near-daily occurrence.
Russian authorities said Saturday that special forces killed the militant suspected of organizing deadly bombings that killed 40 people in Moscow's subway system in March.
Authorities say the suspect, Magomedali Vagabov, was one of five militants killed when special forces surrounded the militants' hideout. State television showed Russian troops pouring gunfire into a stone house that caught fire during the siege.
Some information for this report was provided by AP and Reuters.
