Official: 2 traffic policemen shot dead in restive southern region of Russia

Official: 2 police shot dead in Russia’s Dagestan

MAKHACHKALA, Russia — Police in Russia’s unsettled southern province of Dagestan say assailants have gunned down two traffic policemen who pulled over their car.

A spokesman for Dagestan’s Interior Ministry told The Associated Press that Tuesday morning’s attack took place in the center of the provincial capital, Makhachkala.

Spokesman Vyacheslav Gadzhiyev says the three men in the car unexpectedly produced Kalashnikov automatic rifles when asked for their documents. He says one policeman died immediately and his colleague a little later in the hospital.

Such attacks are common not only in Dagestan but across Russia’s predominantly Muslim North Caucasus region, where authorities are fighting an entrenched and militant Islamist separatist movement.