Russian police kill two terrorists in Dagestan

Police in southern Russia's Dagestan region stormed a house where gunmen had holed up Wednesday, killing two suspected terrorists, a police commander said.

Two other suspected terrorists surrendered before police moved in on the home on the outskirts of the regional capital, Makhachkala, and one police officer was wounded in the eye in an exchange of gunfire, said Magomed Baachilov, the commander of an elite Interior Ministry unit.

Operations in which police besiege alleged militants holed up in apartments have become common in violence-plagued Dagestan and other largely Muslim provinces in Russia's North Caucasus, an ethnically mixed strip of republics where poverty, corruption and persecution of Muslims perceived as radical have fueled anger at the authorities, the AP says.

Police surrounded the home in the village of Shamkhal-Termen and demanded the surrender of four suspected militants they had learned were hold up inside, Baachilov said. Two men surrendered, while two others refused, he said.

Dagestan borders Chechnya, the location of two terrorist wars since 1994.