Interior Ministry troops killed seven armed insurgents — including a former boxer with Canadian citizenship — over the weekend during a special operation in the troubled Dagestan republic, a news report said.
A source in the republic's special operations headquarters told RIA-Novosti that police encircled the insurgents late Friday night on the outskirts of the village of Utamysh, where the rebels put up armed resistance Saturday.
In the ensuing firefight, one police officer was killed and another injured, the news agency said, adding that a special anti-terror regime had been introduced in Dagestan's Kayakentsky district, where the firefight took place.
Among those killed was William Plotnikov, a former boxer with a Canadian passport who went by the nickname "the Canadian," a separate source in local security services told RIA-Novosti on Sunday.
The Federal Security Service's National Anti-Terror Committee earlier identified two other insurgents shot in the operation as chiefs of local criminal groups who had eluded federal authorities since 2010.
