Blast kills two in Dagestan

An explosion of a mortar shell occurred on the premises of a military unit in the Tsumada district of Dagestan, a source with the Tsumada District Division of Internal Affairs said on Wednesday.

"A mortar shell detonated, according to our information. The blast killed two servicemen and one is wounded," the source told Interfax.

The killed soldiers served in a Defence Ministry military unit based in the Rostov region, Buinaksk garrison military prosecutor Zaurbek Akhmedov told Caucasian Knot. In Dagestan, they performed special counter-terrorism related operations. "They had found a cache with munitions in the Tsumada district and transported it to a temporary disposition not far from Agvali (a district centre - ed.). A 120-mm mortar shell detonated there. Two of the servicemen died on the spot, the third one was wounded. He was transported through Botlikh to the hospital in Khankala, Chechnya," the military prosecutor said.

Colonel Vasilii Chubenko of the Russian Internal Affairs Ministry's interior troops died in a Khasavyurt, Dagestan, hospital, having been wounded in a skirmish with rebels on 26 July, Latip Alkhamatov, chief of the Khasavyurt District Division of Internal Affairs, told Interfax.

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