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Russian Forces Kill Up to 5 Suspected Militants in Dagestan

Russian security forces killed up to five suspected militants in armed confrontations in the North Caucasus province of Dagestan on Saturday,  Interfax reported.

Two officers were wounded in the fighting in the Caspian Sea coastal city of Derbent, where police and other government forces stormed two homes, said law enforcement authorities, Interfax reported. Police could not immediately be reached.

The bodies of three suspected militants were found in one of the homes after a gunbattle, and two were believed to have been killed in the other home, the report said.

Dagestan, a mostly Muslim region in Russia's North Caucasus, along the country's southern edge, is plagued by an Islamist insurgency rooted in two post-Soviet separatist wars in the neighboring Chechnya province.

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