"The attack on the police officer occurred at about 10:00 p.m. Moscow time (7:00 p.m. GMT) on Wednesday in the village of Stary Cherek, where an unknown gunman came up to the officer, who was returning home after work, and fired into his chest," a source said.
The police officer died in hospital soon after the attack. A cause of the attack is not clear at the moment.
The republic's capital, Nalchik, was the scene of a concerted and prolonged attack on police and other officials by militants on October 13, 2005. 24 police, 14 civilians, and some 90 militants died in the shooting, which lasted for around 24 hours.
Nalchik is about 100 km (60 miles) northwest of Beslan, where Chechen separatists seized a school in 2004, leading to the deaths of more than 300 people, many of them children.
