You're reading: Four rebels killed in Russia’s Caucasus province

MAKHACHKALA — Law enforcement officials say security forces have killed four militants, including a rebel warlord, in Russia's restive province of Dagestan in the North Caucasus.

National Anti-Terrorist Committee spokesman Andrei Chatskyi told Rossiya-24 television that warlord Aslan Mamedov and an accomplice were shot dead Sunday in a gunfight with security forces in the town of Khasavyurt near Chechnya. Mamedov had been accused of staging a series of attacks on police and other authorities in Dagestan.

Regional police spokesman Vyacheslav Gasanov said another two militants died over the weekend in a clash with police in the village of Tukhchar west of Khasavyurt.

Dagestan and other provinces in Russia’s North Caucasus have been destabilized by an Islamic insurgency that has spread across the region following two separatist wars in Chechnya.