ROSTOV-ON-DON, August 8 (RIA Novosti) - Two policemen have died in the hospital after an assassination attempt on the interior minister of the southern Russian republic of Daghestan, a doctor at the hospital said.
Minister Adilgerei Magomedtagirov emerged unhurt from the attack on his car as he was traveling a highway connecting the North Caucasus republic's capital Makhachkala and Buinaksk, another regional center. Three of his accompanying policemen were wounded and hospitalized, two of whom succumbed to their wounds.
The doctor said the third policeman remained in the hospital in a serious condition and was undergoing surgery.
He added that three locals, a man and two women, were also being treated for gun wounds after becoming caught up in the attack.
Earlier Andzhela Martirosova, a spokesman for the republic's interior ministry, said an explosion went off as the minister's motorcade was passing. His car managed to travel another 100 meters after the explosion before it came under a sustained five-minute burst of gun fire from a nearby forest.
Magomedtagirov was on his way to the crime scene in Buinaksk, where at 8:30 a.m. local time (4:30 a.m. GMT) Bitar Bitarov, the town's prosecutor, was seriously wounded when an explosive device planted on a roadside detonated as his car was passing. Bitarov also later died in the hospital.
Russian television channel Vesti reported that armored personnel carriers and a helicopter had been brought into the area of the attack on the interior minister to hunt down a group of militants thought to be responsible for the assassination attempt.
Daghestan, which borders on Chechnya, has had a troubled history in the last few years and Bitarov was the chief legal officer in a town which itself saw a horrific apartment-block bombing in 1999 that killed 64 people.
Law-enforcement officials in Chechnya said the events in Daghestan had not affected the situation in the republic and no measures to tighten security along the border would be taken.
