At about 8 a.m. Moscow time (4 a.m. GMT), police encircled a detached house in the village of Pervomaiskoye in northwest Daghestan, anticipating armed resistance. After calls to surrender were met with fire, police moved in and killed two gunmen.
The two were identified as members of a notorious armed group led by warlord Takhir Bashayev, also recently killed in a search-and-destroy operation, long wanted for involvement in attacks on law enforcement officers.
No police casualties were reported.
Daghestan borders Chechnya in the west and the oil-rich Caspian Sea on the east. A 2.7-million predominantly Muslim patchwork of at least 30 different ethnic groups and languages, it has been seen by many as the softest target for terrorist recruiters and ideologues.
A Shamil Basayev-led Chechen terrorist invasion of Daghestan in the summer of 1999 triggered the second antiterrorism operation in Chechnya.
