9 February 2006 – Reports say seven Russian soldiers have been killed in clashes over a 24-hour period in Chechnya.
Meanwhile, two Russian police officers and five militants died today in a clash with a group of suspected Chechen militants in a southern province near war-ravaged Chechnya.
The AP quotes Roman Shchekotin, a spokesman for the regional branch of Russia's Interior Ministry, as saying that police hunted down five militants in Tukui-Mekteb, a village in the southern Stavropol region about 40 kilometers north of the border with Chechnya.
(AFP, AP)