At least 14 militants who had sworn allegiance to Islamic State have been killed by special forces in the city of Nalchik in Russia’s North Caucasus region, National Counter-Terrorist Committee reported on Sunday.
Russian special forces killed 11 of the gang’s militants during a counter-terrorist operation that took place near Nalchik earlier on Sunday.
Later in the day, three more militants were killed, according to the National Counter-Terrorist Committee press-center.
The firefight between police and the militants started on early Sunday morning in woodland adjacent to Nalchik, the capital of Kabardino-Balkaria Republic, where counter-terrorist operation was announced on Saturday. A unit searching a territory near the city spotted a group of militants in a dug-out.
The special unit blocked the area and surrounded the bunker, advising the militants to surrender, but the group answered with fire from automatic weapons and threw several grenades.
The first skirmish with the militants resulted in reported five dead among the group. Later on the number of deceased terrorists grew to eleven, National Counter-Terrorist Committee reports.
At 1:00 p.m. Moscow time, the head of the Federal Security Service (FSB) office in Kabardino-Balkaria ended the counter-terrorist operation regime imposed in Nalchik and the neighboring Cherek municipal district at 8:00 a.m. Sunday morning.
The National Counter-Terrorist Committee re-established a counter-terrorist regime at 7:45 pm after a new skirmish broke out. The gang was subsequently completely neutralized, police sources reported, according to RIA Novosti.
There were no casualties among civilians or law enforcement officers.
On November 10, another counter-terrorist operation in Nalchik ended with Robert Zankishiev, a leader of a local Islamic State cell, being killed.