Five suspected militants have reportedly been captured in Russia's restive southern republic of Chechnya. The Russian Interior Ministry's Northern Caucasus department believes one of the men seized took part in an attack on a police patrol in 2004, in which one police officer was killed and two others were injured.Another had allegedly been in a 30-strong group that killed five Russian troops in the village of Roshni-Chu in August 2005. Two men were detained for storing weapons for militants and gathering information on federal troops.
The arrests were made in a range in four different parts of Chechnya: in the town of Gudermes and in the districts of Nozhai-Yurt, Achkoi-Martan, and Shyolkovsky. One suspected militant gave himself up in the Vedeno district.
It was not immediately clear when the sweep operations took place.