Russian security says eight rebels have been killed in a gunfight with police in the North Caucasus region of Dagestan.
Federal Security Service officials say a group had blockaded themselves in a house in the capital, Makhachkala.
Russia has been fighting an Islamist insurgency in the North Caucasus since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
It went to war against separatist rebels in Chechnya in 1994-96 and again in 1999-2000.
