MOSCOW: Four police were shot dead on Sunday in an ambush by unknown gunmen in Russia’s violence-plagued Caucasus region of Dagestan, the local Interior Ministry said. The incident took place in Russia’s violence-plagued Dagestan region on Sunday when unidentified gunmen opened fire on their car, local investigators said.
The police drove to the village of Burshi where they had received a report of a robbery, and were shot dead as they were leaving the area, Russian news agencies quoted the Interior Ministry as saying.
A largely Muslim region on the Caspian Sea, Dagestan has become Russia’s worst trouble spot in recent years with almost daily attacks on the security forces blamed on Islamist militants.
The police officers were on their way back from a village of Burshi, some 100 km south-west of regional capital Makhachkala, when their car was attacked by two assailants. Insurgents are fighting to carve out an Islamic state in Dagestan, an ethnically mixed, mostly Muslim region in the North Caucasus between Chechnya and the Caspian Sea.
Dagestan drew an international spotlight following an April bomb attack at the Boston Marathon in the United States. One of the bombing suspects, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, went to Dagestan during a six-month visit to Russia last year, and Russian and US authorities are trying to determine whether he had contacts with militants there.
4 cops killed in ambush in Russia’s Dagestan
