Chechnya: Russian troops stormed an apartment block and killed seven suspected Islamic militants yesterday, ending a three-day siege in Nalchik, a town in the Caucasus region close to Chechnya.
Four of the fighters were women, a local Interior Ministry spokesman told Interfax news agency.
"All the women were part of the gang and took an active role in shooting at law enforcement personnel during the special operation," the spokesman said.
Tass news agency reported that the militants had tried to shoot at a passenger aircraft from the local airport, forcing the cancellation of all flights for the duration of the siege.
Tass said the windows of the building faced the airport, and witnesses had observed an attempt to shoot at an aircraft. It gave no further details.
The violent climax to the stand-off, which began on Tuesday, was at least the fourth shoot-out with suspected Islamic rebels this month, each pitting elite armoured troops against a handful of fighters barricaded inside a residential building.
Interior Minister Mr Rashid Nurgaliyev has branded the whole region a "breeding ground for Wahhabism", as Islamic extremism is known in Russia, and officials link the militants to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.
Officials said the dead in Nalchik included Muslim Atayev, leader of "Yarmuk" - a radical Islamic group affiliated with Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev and the target of previous law-enforcement efforts in Kabardino-Balkariya.
They also said two soldiers were slightly wounded by a grenade blast during the six-hour assault, but a statement on rebel website www.kavkazcenter.com, purportedly from a source in Yarmuk, said five special forces soldiers had been killed.
Yarmuk was linked to last month's attack on an office belonging to the Federal Drug Control in Nalchik, when raiders killed four of the agency's employees, looted its arsenal and set the office on fire.
Officials claimed that some of the militants in the building had allegedly taken part in December's attack.
Russia's campaign against Islamic militants has intensified since the Beslan school siege in September, in which more than 330 hostages died, many of them children.
Local officials in Nalchik say they have a list of 500 suspected rebels.
Nalchik lies in the foothills of Mount Elbrus and the rugged terrain provides a wealth of hiding places within a few hours' drive from Chechnya, where Russian troops have been fighting rebels for a decade. - (Reuters, AP)