MAKHACHKALA, Russia (AP): Government forces killed five militants in three separate apartment sieges during a two-day operation against suspected insurgents in southern Russia's violence-plagued Dagestan province, police said on Sunday. A separate attack in Chechnya left two police officers dead.

One of the alleged militants was killed on Sunday when police and security forces mounted an assault on an apartment where he had been holed up overnight in Dagestan's capital, Makhachkala, city police chief Shamil Guseinov said. A woman who was with him was detained, Guseinov said.

Four other militants were killed and three surrendered to the authorities Saturday after standoffs at two other apartment buildings in Makhachkala, Guseinov and other officials said. Russian television networks cited unidentified security officials as saying the victims may have been members of a local militant group whose leader was killed earlier this month.

Dagestan, adjacent to war-scarred Chechnya in Russia's volatile North Caucasus region, is troubled by daily violence stemming from political, business and clan disputes as well as Islamic militancy. Police sieges of homes where militants are said to be hiding are common.

Russian television footage of the two-day operation showed a grenade blast, gunfire, a body on a rooftop and a woman in a headscarf descending a stairwell with her hands up. But there was no way to immediately confirm the authorities' account or their claim that the victims were militants.

The victim of a fatal police shooting in Dagestan last week was initially described by authorities as a militant, but police later acknowledged he was a security officer for a town mayor. A wounded victim of the same shooting turned out to be a policeman.

Chechnya, the site of two devastating wars pitting government forces against separatist rebels in the 1990s, is still plagued by small-scale fighting and other violence.

A man with a pistol walked into a grocery store in the Chechen town of Urus-Martan late Saturday or early Sunday and shot three police officers at close range, killing two and seriously wounding the other, the provincial Interior Ministry said. The gunman fled.