Officials: 5 rebels shot dead in southern Russia

NAZRAN, Russia — Authorities in Russia’s North Caucasus region have shot dead five insurgents — one of whom was wanted for organizing a failed assassination attempt on Ingushetia’s leader, and two of whom may have been planning a terrorist act in Moscow, officials said Saturday.

Security officers in Ingushetia stopped a car near the capital late Friday, Domir Rossin, head of the local Federal Security Service branch, told The Associated Press.

Three men inside unexpectedly opened fire and were killed in the ensuing gun battle, Rossin said. Rossin said two were killed in the car while the third managed to get out but collapsed and died 500 meters (550 yards) away.

That man — identified as Rustam Dzortov — was a suspected ringleader of rebel operations in Ingushetia and had organized the suicide bombing of Ingush President Yunus Bek Yevkurov’s motorcade earlier this year, Rossin said.

Yevkurov survived the blast and recovered fully after emergency surgery but several bodyguards were killed.

In neighboring Chechnya, meanwhile, two suspected insurgents were killed in a similar incident Friday night, according to the region’s Interior Ministry.

Police near Chechnya’s second city of Gudermes tried to arrest two men they suspected to be rebel fighters, but the men resisted detention and were shot dead, the ministry said in a statement.

The suspected insurgents were found to have explosives strapped to them, hand grenades, and train tickets to Moscow. Police are investigating whether an act of terrorism was planned for the train, or for somewhere in Moscow, or whether the suspected rebels had accomplices.

Chechnya is the epicenter of violence across Russia’s North Caucasus region. Large-scale separatist movements were quashed in two bloody wars there in the last 15 years, but attacks persist, and some say are intensifying, in Chechnya and several surrounding republics.