Russia's Federal Security service, the FSB, has prevented a series of large-scale terrorist attacks against the new leadership of the southern republic of Ingushetia in the Northern Caucasus.

According to the FSB, it managed to eliminate a terror cell led by a local warlord that planned suicide bomb attacks.

During the operation in Nazran, one of the republic's largest cities, special forces exchanged gunfire with militants holed up in a house. The terrorists used grenade launchers before blowing up the building. A later search uncovered radio and bomb-making equipment along with more than a tonne of explosives.

Further, bomb disposal experts neutralised 14 improvised explosive devices, more than six hundred explosive objects and about 200 kilos of explosives in Khankala, Chechnya, according to Maj. Gen. Nikolay Sivak, the combined federal forces commander. Eight militant camps and eleven dugouts were also destroyed.

The combined federal forces also conducted large-scale operations in the Grozny district of Chechnya and its troops are now involved in a special operation in the Malgobek district of Ingushetia, Sivak said.