Akhmed Kotiyev, the head of Ingushetia’s Security Council, was shot dead after his car came under gunfire on early Tuesday August 27 morning, a spokesman for the local Health Ministry said, according to RIA Novosti.

Earlier, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry said that Kotiyev’s car came under fire from unidentified assailants at 7.40 a.m. local time at the Nizhniye Achaluki village as he was riding with his driver to work in the city of Magas.

Kotiyev’s driver was wounded in the attack and taken to a hospital, where he later died of sustained injuries.

The Islamist insurgency, once confined largely to the republic of Chechnya, has spread across the North Caucasus in recent years. Attacks on security forces, police and civilians are reported regularly in the neighboring republics of Dagestan, Ingushetia and Kabardino-Balkaria.