Rostov-On-Don: A clash between militants and Russian security forces in Chechnya killed five troops and wounded six others, officials said on Friday.
It was among the largest Russian losses in a single incident in several months.
The battle broke out late Thursday outside Shalazhi, a village in the foothills of the southern Chechnya mountains where rebels are sheltered, said Magomed Deniev, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry's Chechen division.
The Interior Ministry's branch in southern Russia said authorities found the bodies of five suspected militants also killed in the clash.
Full-scale fighting between insurgents and Russian forces in Chechnya ended in the early 2000s, but small clashes and roadside bombings persist and violence has increasingly spilled into neighbouring regions in the volatile North Caucasus.
In the province of Dagestan east of Chechnya, a senior police officer was killed on Friday when an explosive device hit a vehicle he was driving, regional police spokesman Mark
Tolchinsky said.
PTI
First Published: Saturday, February 06, 2010, 10:04