Two militants neutralized in Dagestan, soldier killed - NAC
MOSCOW. July 4 (Interfax) - Russia's National Antiterrorist Committee (NAC) has announced that two members of the so-called Kizilyurt gang were neutralized during a counter-terrorism operation in the Republic of Dagestan in Russia's North Caucasus.
"As soldiers of special-operations units combed through the forest between the villages of Nechayevka and Matseyevka, they came under automatic weapon fire. Two militants were neutralized as a result of the ensuing armed clash and a chase, which continued for almost 48 hours," NAC said in a press release, seen by Interfax.
"Regrettably, there were also losses among law enforcement personnel - one soldier of special operation units of Russia's Internal Troops was killed," it said.
NAC said that security services had been alerted about the presence of militants' 'summer base' in a forest in the Kizilyurt district of Dagestan, and the chief of the NAC operations headquarters in the republic had ordered that a counter-terrorism operation be launched in the area.
A weapons cache apparently belonging to the militants was found at the site of the shootout in the forest between Nechayevka and Matseyevka. It included two automatic weapons, several grenades, three rifles, a pistol, a large amount of ammunition, as well as components for making improvised explosive devices - over 20 kilograms of explosives and industrially manufactured detonators, NAC said.
"The neutralized militants have been tentatively identified as active members of the 'Kizilyurt gang' wanted by the federal authorities," it said.
The information available to the Dagestan branch of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) suggests that this gang stood behind a number of grave crimes, including terrorism-related crimes, NAC said.
In April 2014 members of this gang killed a village mosque imam in the Kizilyurt district, and in May they murdered an imam of a mosque in the village of Stalnoye in Dagestan's Buinaksk district. On the same occasion, they seized a car threatening its owner with firearms, shot two men at point blank in the village of Novy Chirkey and then fled in an unknown direction. Both men died from their wounds instantly.
In July 2014 members of this gang set up an ambush in a private house on the outskirts of Dagestan, where they tied up the son of the town's former police chief and them brutally killed the owner of the house.
In October 2014, police and detectives from the republic's FSB branch managed to prevent two terrorist attacks when they timely detected two Gazelle vehicles packed with explosives, which the militants planned to detonate near the district police department's building and at a traffic police checkpoint at the entrance to Kizilyurt. The explosives planted in the two vehicles contained the combined equivalent of more than 100 kilograms of TNT.
A search for other members of the gang and their accomplices continues.
"None of the civilians was hurt during this counter-terrorism operation," NAC said.