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NAZRAN, Russia : Ten Chechen police were killed on Saturday when militants fired on their convoy in the neighbouring Russian region of Ingushetia, one of the deadliest recent attacks in the increasingly volatile Caucasus.
The convoy of six vehicles came under grenade and gun fire from unknown individuals hidden in a forest as it travelled on a road in Ingushetia at around 0530 GMT, security officials said. One vehicle burst into flames.
"Forty-five members of the Chechnya police force were returning from a joint special operation when their convoy came under fire. Ten were killed and ten were wounded," an Ingush security source told AFP.
The Chechen police were in Ingushetia to conduct a joint special operation against militants with their Ingush colleagues close to the regional border, the source added.
The investigative committee of Russian prosecutors said nine police had been killed and 10 wounded.
Concerns have grown in the last weeks about the stability of Ingushetia, one of Russia's most violent regions, after its leader Yunus-Bek Yevkurov was gravely wounded in a car bombing on June 22.
The fact that Chechen police were the victims is especially significant as Chechnya's controversial leader Ramzan Kadyrov has in recent weeks positioned himself as the strongman of the entire Caucasus region.
The attack is the deadliest single militant strike in the Caucasus since April when Russia abolished a decade-long anti-terror operation in Chechnya which was the scene of two separatist wars since the collapse of communism.
Russia justified that move by saying stability had returned to Chechnya under Kadyrov. But analysts warned at the time that other regions of the Caucasus were still mired in unrest.
Islamist militants are battling pro-Kremlin authorities and Russian security forces in a low-level insurgency in the overwhelmingly Muslim regions of Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia.
The militants claim they are trying to form an "Islamic Emirate" in the Caucasus.
"Sooner or later we will get them," said Chechnya's interior minister Ruslan Alkhanov. "Not a single crime will go unpunished."
Officials said Friday Yevkurov has regained consciousness after almost two weeks in a coma but the Kremlin has appointed the local prime minister Rashid Gaisanov as acting Ingush leader until he recovers.
That move was widely seen as a bid by the Kremlin to halt political infighting in the Caucasus after both Kadyrov and former Ingush president Ruslan Aushev showed interest in filling the power vacuum.
Dagestan is also of particular concern after militants in June shot dead the region's long-serving interior minister as he attended the wedding of a colleague's daughter.
Militants on Wednesday staged a brazen attack in the ancient Dagestani city of Derbent, opening fire on a police station and then exploding a car parked next to it.
Kadyrov's own tactics also remain the focus of attention amid allegations of rights abuses. This week Human Rights Watch accused his security forces of systematically burning down homes of the families of alleged militants.
- AFP/vm
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