MOSCOW, April 28 (RIA Novosti) - Two police officers shot dead early Friday were killed by members of a Moscow-based organized crime group set up by ethnic Georgians, a source close to the investigation said.
The officers came under fire from an automatic weapon as they entered an apartment in the south of the Russian capital, following a telephone call reporting an ongoing burglary.
"The attackers are members of a Moscow-based organized crime group of ethnic Georgians," the source said, adding that the gang had been raiding the apartment, owned by ethnic Armenians, as part of a war between crime groups feuding over economic interests.
He said the killers left the apartment through a window, and that no casualties among members of the Armenian family that owned the apartment have been reported.
Police said earlier Friday that one police officer was killed at the scene, and the other was wounded and died while being taken to the hospital. The second officer said before he died that there had been six attackers in the apartment.
Prosecutors said they had opened a criminal case into the incident, and police have launched a search for the killers.
