About 900 police officers have been killed or injured over the past two years as the number of attacks against the police force has tripled, Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev said Monday.

The figures include police officers serving in the volatile North Caucasus, Nurgaliyev said, without providing separate statistics for casualties in the region, Interfax reported.

In total, about 25,000 criminal offenses toward police officers are committed nationwide every year, Nurgaliyev said, without elaborating.

He added that about 1,000 police officers have had to ask for state protection for themselves and their families this year, a 7 percent increase from 2009.

As if to drive the point home, unidentified assailants tried to torch a police precinct in northern Moscow's Khovrino district with a Molotov cocktail later Monday, Interfax reported.

The fire only burned a portion of the building's brick wall and some fallen autumn leaves, the news report said. The attackers fled in a car, leaving some two dozen leaflets signed by an unknown organization that called itself the Group of Russian Anarchists, Vesti.ru reported.