"Four militants have been killed in the Sergokala district [western Daghestan], and one militant has been killed and three arrested in Makhachkala [Daghestan's capital]," Mark Tolchinsky said.
The spokesman also said a local police official was killed Friday in the town of Buinaksk, the site of a 1999 terrorist attack that killed 64 people and injured 100.
The deputy head of the local police department, Abdulmashid Rasulov, "was killed at about 7.50 a.m. Moscow time (3.50 a.m. GMT) on the way to work," the spokesman said.
Rasulov escaped an assassination attempt last year when two militants were killed in a gunfight with police before they could harm the official.
Militants in Daghestan, which borders with the troubled Chechen republic, have recently intensified their attacks on local officials in what authorities call an attempt to destabilize the situation in the North Caucasus region.
A July 27 explosion in Makhachkala killed local deputy mufti Magomed Albogachiyev, and a July 18 blast killed four police officers and injured at least eight in the town of Kizilyurt in central Daghestan.
