The Islamic State group today claimed responsibility for the killing of two policemen in Russia's volatile region of Dagestan.
The monitoring group SITE quoted an Arabic language report on the terrorist group's Amaq propaganda agency as saying that three IS fighters had killed the two Russian policemen near the Dagestani city of Kizilyurt on Sunday.
Russia's National Anti-Terror Committee said in turn that, during an "anti-terror operation" in Dagestan on Sunday, police had neutralised "two bandits" involved in the killing of policemen.
The militants had a hunting rifle, a knife and a service gun belonging to one of the murdered policemen, the statement said without providing further details.
The report came after local investigators said an unidentified assailant had stabbed a police officer in the neck in a Dagestani village during a nighttime attack last week. The policeman succumbed to his wounds, investigators said.
Islamist rebels from Dagestan, which lies immediately east of Chechnya, are known to have travelled to Syria to join IS.
In 2015, the Islamist group declared it had established a "franchise" in the North Caucasus.
It has claimed a number of attacks on police in Dagestan in the last couple of years that have involved guns and explosives, as local security forces battle a simmering Islamist insurgency.
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