"On Friday, at about 8:15 p.m., a group of militants machine-gunned a car and a tow-truck carrying servicemen of an army unit returning to their base of temporary deployment from Khankala," the source said.
According to him, the militants killed the commander of a reconnaissance squad and three contract servicemen.
The militants seized three Kalashnikov assault rifles, a Dragunov sniper rifle and a Motorola radio transceiver.
In another incident, a mine explosion wounded two contract servicemen, a spokesperson for the Regional Headquarters (RH) in charge of the counter-terrorist operation in North Caucasus told RIA Novosti on Saturday.
According to the RH spokesperson, an unidentified explosive device blew up when army servicemen were carrying out a search-and-reconnaissance operation near the village of Novye Atagy at about 6:00 p.m. on Friday.
The RH official said that two contract servicemen were wounded by the blast. Both were immediately hospitalized.
Our source in the Chechen Interior Ministry also said that a group of about twenty militants burned down a few houses in the Kurchaloi district of Chechnya.
"At about 8:00 p.m. on Friday, a group of unidentified men in a camouflage uniform, threatening the local residents with assault rifles, set their houses on fire. After that the militants were gone," the source reported.
According to him, those who suffered in the attack have relatives working in Chechnya's law-enforcement bodies.
"Nobody was hurt in the incident; our experts are estimating the damages incurred," an official of the republic's Interior Ministry said.
