Members of the Special Rapid Response Unit are seen outside a residential house in Leninsky Avenue during a counterterrorism operation conducted by the Russian Federal Security Service, Aug. 17, 2016.
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Markin said no civilians or security forces were injured in the incident.
Russian security forces killed four suspected terrorist fighters today as they stormed an apartment in St. Petersburg during a counterterrorism raid, police said.
Russian Federation has battled a simmering insurgency in the Caucasus ever since fighting two brutal separatist conflicts with Chechnya. They were followed by plumes of smoke, witnesses added.
TV footage showed heavily-armed men in balaclavas cordoning off the multistorey apartment block on the outskirts of the northwestern city famed for its tsarist-era palaces.
The attackers were originally from Central Asia and had carried out the attack wielding axes, it said. “One of them was shot dead by the police during the attack and the other was killed when he was resisting arrest”.
Special operations against suspected Islamists are frequent in Russia’s North Caucasus region but have been rare in Moscow and Saint Petersburg in recent years.
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The insurgency in North Caucasus followed two bitter separatist conflicts in Russia’s Chechnya republic and has occasionally spilled over into violence in other parts of Russian Federation.
