AP

Men inspecting a bullet-riddled car on Friday in Buinaksk, Dagestan, where four policemen were shot dead.

Two policemen were killed in separate sniper attacks in Dagestan on Saturday, authorities said, the latest in three days of bloodshed that claimed more than 20 lives in the North Caucasus.

The first of the shootings took place Saturday morning at a police post near the central square of Makhachkala, the local Interior Ministry said. One officer died.

Another officer was killed in a second attack at a traffic police post on the outskirts of the city, the ministry said.

Violence in Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia has escalated with almost daily attacks on Kremlin-backed government officials and police. President Dmitry Medvedev ordered a crackdown on “terrorist scum” in the North Caucasus in June.

And while small clashes and attacks on police are common in the region, the past several days have been unusually bloody.

Dagestani police conducted house-to-house searches in Buinaksk, about 40 kilometers west of Makhachkala, for a gang that shot to death seven prostitutes in a bathhouse and four police officers at a road checkpoint Thursday.

The attackers drove to the checkpoint and sprayed it with automatic gunfire, killing four officers on the spot, said Mark Tolchinsky, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry’s branch in Dagestan.

Two of the assailants have been identified, and one of them is a separatist fighter on the federal wanted list, Ruslan Ibragimgadzhiev, another spokesman for the local Interior Ministry said.

A group of as many as 15 men abandoned the van they had been traveling in near a summer camp on the edge of forests outside Buinaksk, he said.

Police also shot and killed three militants south of Makhachkala when they refused to stop their car Thursday night, and the following day a rooftop sniper shot and mortally wounded two traffic cops at a central crossroads in Makhachkala, Tolchinsky said.

“Certainly, what is happening now is being heated up from the outside, beyond the Russian borders. There can be no other explanation. Dagestani people do not need to kill one another,” Dagestan Interior Minister Ali Magomedov said, Interfax reported.

The violence was not limited to Dagestan, with attacks reported in Chechnya and Ingushetia, as well.

The Chechen Interior Ministry said Friday that security forces waged a 1 1/2-hour firefight with two gunmen holed up in a house northwest of Grozny. It said both militants were killed, while at least four officers also died and four more were wounded.

South of Grozny, five Interior Ministry troops were wounded in another gun battle with militants.

In Ingushetia, three gunmen killed a woman who told fortunes on Thursday. Members of militant Islamic groups see fortunetelling as a grave vice, the local Interior Ministry said.

On Wednesday, Ingushetia’s construction minister was shot at close range in his heavily guarded office.

In Chechnya, three human rights activists have been shot and killed in the past month, including two last week and one in July.

(AP, Bloomberg, Reuters)