At least 24 killed in Russian Caucasus fighting

Seventeen police and at least seven insurgents were killed in four days of fighting on the border between the Chechnya and Dagestan provinces in Russia's North Caucasus, police said on Saturday.

The toll among government forces was the biggest in months in the region along Russia's southern border, where it faces an Islamist insurgency more than a decade after driving separatists from power in a war in Chechnya. (Reuters)