Four Russian police and three suspected rebels were killed in fighting in Ingushetia, in Russia's troubled North Caucasus, officials said Feb. 12. Gunmen opened fire and then detonated a landmine when police tried to raid a house in the city of Nazran. The blast destroyed the two-storey house, and a large cache of explosives was reportedly found in the rubble. "While cleaning the rubble, we found four 200-kilogram barrels filled with potassium nitrate and with detonators attached. The bomb could have exploded at any time," a spokesman for the Federal Security Service's Ingushetia department said. (RIA Novosti, BBC News, Feb. 12)

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