Chechnya ambush leaves five dead

Five policemen have been killed by a militant ambush in Russia's southern republic of Chechnya, officials say.

Four more were wounded as their three-vehicle convoy was attacked by grenades and gunfire as it travelled through a narrow gorge in the Sharoi region.

Sunday evening's attack capped another bloody weekend in the North Caucasus, where violence has been escalating.

A policeman was gunned down on Sunday in Dagestan hours after three Russian officials were shot dead in Ingushetia.

Violence has flared in the North Caucasus in recent months, with dozens of militants and members of the security forces being killed.

The frequency of attacks in the neighbouring territories has heightened fears a violent Islamist insurgency is growing, correspondents say.

Russian forces have fought two wars against Islamist separatists in the mainly Muslim republic of Chechnya since 1994. The conflicts claimed more than 100,000 lives and left it in ruins.

Although the situation has become more stable under the Moscow-backed regional president, Ramzan Kadyrov, militants continue to carry out regular attacks while human rights groups accuse government-backed militias of widespread abuses.

Escalating violence

The latest bloodshed came a week after a suicide bomber killed six people outside a theatre in the Chechen capital, Grozny.

That attack followed a string of successful militant attacks on high-level government targets in the North Caucasus.

In June, the president of Ingushetia, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, was critically injured by a car bomb in an apparent assassination attempt.

Two weeks earlier, Dagestan's interior minister was shot dead.

Mr Kadyrov took power in Chechnya in 2007 after his father was assassinated

In April, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev ordered the end of a decade-long "counter-terrorism operation" in Chechnya, which was supposed to pave the way for the withdrawal of thousands of federal troops.

But human rights groups have accused law enforcement agencies in the region of involvement in hundreds of cases kidnapping, torture and extra-judicial killings.

Prominent human rights activist Natalia Estemirova was investigating alleged abuses by government-backed militias when she was abducted and shot in Chechnya last month.

Although the Chechen president has vowed to hunt down her killers, colleagues of Ms Estemirova have blamed Mr Kadyrov's government for her death - charges he denies.

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