An armed gang, surrounded in an apartment building at around at 5:30 a.m. local time (2:30 a.m. GMT) in the center of the capital, Cherkessk, offered stiff resistance, opening fire and throwing grenades at police and Federal Security Service (FSB) officers.
The apartment was stormed and taken, the spokesman said.
The militants were suspected members of a group led by Achemez Gochiyayev, wanted for a 1999 apartment bombing in Moscow, and the late warlord Timur Gloov, killed in Circassia this year. The group was involved in killing local police and FSB officers, the local FSB department said in a news release.
The besieged apartment belongs to Temerlan Bostanov, one of the main suspects in the case of Ali Kaitov and his 15 accomplices, charged with killing seven people in October 2004. A verdict in the case is set to be announced in a local court later in the day.
The bodies of the seven residents of Karachayevo-Circassia - regional lawmaker Rasul Bogatyryov and six of his friends, who vanished in the early hours of October 11, 2004, were found in an abandoned mine near the village of Kumysh, in the Karachaevsk District.
Their relatives said they headed for the cottage of Ali Kaitov, director of the Kavkaz-Tsement company and former son-in-law of the president of Karachayevo-Circassia. Witnesses said they later heard bursts of machinegun fire near the house lasting for about half an hour.
Kaitov was arrested October 25, 2004 under a ruling of the Board of the High Court of Karachayevo-Circassia. Other suspects were also detained.
This is not the first gang of militants to be eliminated in Karachayevo-Circassia. A group controlled by Chechnya's number one terrorist Shamil Basayev, killed in a special operation last summer, was destroyed in May 2005 near Cherkessk.
In April 2006, local law enforcement officials eliminated another group, which included Timur Gloov, whose elder brother Idris, believed to be a leader of a Wahhabite cell in Circassia and charged with a fatal bombing of a Moscow subway in 2004, was killed last year.
