Seven Russian policemen and 12 gunmen are believed to have been killed when special forces stormed houses in a southern village to flush out insurgents, officials said today.
Russian television showed police with automatic weapons and body armour dragging the charred corpses of gunmen away from a collapsed house in the Tukui-Mekteb village in the Stavropol region of southern Russia.
Officials said fighters linked to the long-running Islamist insurgency against Moscow's rule in the nearby North Caucasus had been holed up in the village.
About 300 residents were evacuated and there were no civilian casualties, officials said.
"Most of the militants have been wiped out but there are still several who have been able to hide but they are trapped and will be destroyed," an Interior Ministry spokesman said, the Interfax news agency reported.
Police were using helicopters and sniffer dogs to search for any remaining insurgents, Itar-Tass news agency reported.
Police and special forces were rushed to the village from across the region after the fighting began on Thursday. A local Interior Ministry official said the insurgents were planning to take a school in the village hostage.