NAZRAN, January 22 (RIA Novosti) - Two people were killed and three injured on Tuesday in a car bomb blast and a militant attack in Nazran, a city in Russia's North Caucasus Republic of Ingushetia, a local police source said.

Late on Tuesday, unknown assailants fired shots at a minibus carrying eight federal officers. Four people were injured in the attack, and one of them died on his way to hospital.

At the same time, in what appears to have been a botched terrorist attack, a car packed with explosives went off in the same city, killing the driver.

Ingushetia and Daghestan border the troubled Russian republic of Chechnya, which suffered two devastating separatist wars in the 1990s-early 2000s. The three republics have been plagued by attacks on police and authorities, as well as militant raids.

January has seen a series of attacks on police and shootouts with militants in Ingushetia. One police officer was killed by unknown gunmen on January 16. Two days before, one civilian was killed and two police officers wounded in a skirmish in the village of Verkhniye Achaluki. Two suspected militants were also injured in the latter incident.

On January 9, gunmen opened fire with automatic weapons and launched grenades at two police cars containing six police officers, killing one senior officer and wounding another.