Three Police Shot Dead in Russia's Restive Dagestan

Three policemen were killed and two passers-by were wounded when a pair of unidentified gunmen opened fire in Russia's restive region of Dagestan where the Kremlin faces an Islamist insurgency.

The gunmen killed the three Russian policemen on the spot, while the two passers-by caught up in the shootout were hospitalized, the Investigative Committee said.

The shootout left one of the attackers dead at the scene, while the other was killed as he was trying to flee, investigators said.

Citing preliminary information, they said the attackers were militants aged 28 and 21.

Dagestan, one of Russia's most violent regions, experiences almost daily shootings and bombings that officials blame on local criminals and Islamists with links to Chechnya, where the Kremlin had fought two wars over the past 20 years.

In a separate statement, the National Anti-Terror Committee, part of the FSB security service, said officials had found homemade explosives in the form of suicide belts in an apartment in Dagestan's largest city of Makhachkala.

The power of each belt was equivalent to around 200 grams of TNT.

Two women who had allegedly harbored the explosives in the apartment on behalf of the slain militants were detained, the committee said.

"The timely discovery of the makeshift explosive devices helped prevent terrorist acts that had been planned by bandits for the near future," the statement said.

Dagestan is home to the parents of Boston Marathon bombing suspects Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnayev.