MOSCOW, April 8 (RIA Novosti) - One officer was injured when a police station in Grozny, the capital of Russia's Chechen Republic, came under fire from unknown assailants armed with automatic weapons, a police source said on Tuesday.

"The incident took place around midnight [on Monday]," he said. "A senior police official was hospitalized with a gunshot wound." A search for the assailants is underway.

The North Caucasus republic was the site of two devastating separatist wars in the 1990s and early 2000s. Militants have been increasingly active in neighboring Ingushetia.