Russia said yesterday its forces had killed at least 20 insurgents in intense gun battles over the last two days in its Muslim-dominated Ingushetia region where Moscow is struggling to contain an Islamist insurgency.
"According to our latest figures around 20 insurgents have been killed, but the number of dead could be higher," a police official in Ingushetia's largest city, Nazran, said.
Violence is growing in the patchwork of southern regions - including Chechnya, site of two separatist wars with Moscow since the mid-1990s, Dagestan and Ingushetia - that make up the North Caucasus.
Islamist militancy overlaps with the activity of criminal groups and clan and ethnic rivalries.
An Ingush police officer stationed close to the site of Friday's clash said Russian forces had fired at rebel positions from helicopters during an intense battle.
He added that the death toll included 10 from Thursday in an operation in a mountainous area near the border with Chechnya.
State TV First Channel showed armoured cars and camouflage-clad forces priming for battle in snowy fields.
Unofficial Islamist website kavkazcenter.com said several dozen "infidels", or ordinary citizens, were also injured in the Thursday shoot-out and placed in local hospitals.
Eurasia analyst Matthew Clements, at London-based Janes Information Group, said the scale of shoot-outs over the last 48 hours indicates more violence should be expected.
"Militant attacks, bombings and a high level of violence are all likely. Such large-scale operations show there's going to be an escalation in violence," he said by telephone.
Speaking to state TV, Ingushetia's leader Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, who narrowly escaped a suicide bomb attack on his car last year, said, "Militants who terrorised local villagers have been eliminated... Our goal is to restore stability in the republic and in the Caucasus in general".
Security measures have been strengthened to prevent the violence from crossing over into neighbouring Chechnya, the region's President Ramzan Kadyrov said on Thursday.