Search for militants resumed in Tsuntinsky district of Dagestan

The officer on duty of the Dagestani Border department of the republican Interior Ministry told RIA Novosti that the search for militants had recommenced in Dagestan's Tsuntinsky district from Wednesday morning.

"The military began to comb the locality in the Tsuntinsky district where the militants are presumably staying, from the morning, using the forces of Dagestani police, Army and border-guard units, and the forces of the Federal Security Service (FSB)", the officer on duty said.

As RIA Novosti was earlier told in the regional border-guard department of the FSB of Russia, border guards found the group of bandits in the Tsuntinsky district of Dagestan on Monday morning. Nine border guards, among them the commander of a frontier post, were killed in a fight. The bandits took several hostages in the Shauri village and headed towards the administrative border of Chechnya and Dagestan.

According to the information of chairman of Dagestan's People's Assembly Mukhu Aliyev, after the militants left Shauri at approximately 11.00 p.m. Moscow time on Monday, they were noticed at two small farmsteads, Galatli and Berikh, whence the gang fled before the forces of the border guard service and of Dagestan's Interior Ministry came there.

On Tuesday Defense Minister of Russia Sergei Ivanov said that at about 10.00 a.m. Moscow time one of the groups of militants, which had taken hostages in the Shauri village, was found several kilometres from it. As a result of an operation, six militants were killed. All the hostages were freed, and none of them was hurt.

According to head of the Tsuntinsky district's administration Basir Magomedov, the former hostages are providing important information which can orient military in the pursuit of the bandits.