ROSTOV-ON-DON, August 12 (RIA Novosti) - Ingushetia's construction minister was gunned down in his office on Wednesday, an Interior Ministry official in Russia's volatile southern republic said.

"Unknown gunmen fired at Ruslan Amerkhanov, the construction minister, at about 10:35 a.m. Moscow time (06:35 GMT). Details of the attack are being verified," the official said on the telephone.

The minister's aide was later reported to have been injured in the attack. Two gunmen were reported to have fled the scene in a car.

The killing is the latest in a series of high-profile attacks in the North Caucasus republic.

The republic's president, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, was severely injured in a car bomb explosion on June 22. He was discharged from hospital earlier this week and said he planned to return to work in a month's time pledging to continue fighting militants.

Ingushetia's forensics chief died in July after a shooting, and the republic's Supreme Court judge was assassinated in June.

Russia's mainly Muslim North Caucasus regions have seen a rise in violence in recent months. Attacks on police, officials and troops have been reported almost daily in Ingushetia and neighboring Dagestan that border Chechnya, which saw two separatist wars in the late 1990s-early 2000s.

In Chechnya, three respected human rights activists were abducted have been killed over the past month.