MOSCOW, July 1: Five people died on Thursday in fresh clashes in Ingushetia, a Russian province next to rebel Chechnya where nearly 100 people were killed last week in attacks.

In the latest violence, Russian news agencies reported that two senior police officers were killed during a search for "bandits" in a house in the Ingush town of Malgobek.

Three armed men were also killed and several were detained. Police have been hunting insurgents who last week briefly seized control of large parts of Ingushetia, killing nearly 100 people in one of the most savage attacks in the region.

Many of those who led last week's raids were ethnic Ingushes allied to separatist Chechens. Those raids dealt another blow to the Kremlin which is struggling to crush the Chechen freedom movement and stop it spreading. -Reuters