Two suspected militants were killed on Tuesday, November 26 in a counter-terrorism operation on the outskirts of Makhachkala, the capital of Russia’s volatile North Caucasus republic of Dagestan, RIA Novosti reported.

“Two militants were killed in a shootout. Two others remain holed up in a house,” a local law enforcement representative told RIA Novosti.

The operation began at 4:30 p.m. Moscow time Tuesday (noon GMT) and was still under way by late evening.

Dagestan in recent years has been the epicenter of the Islamist insurgency in Russia’s turbulent North Caucasus, plagued with violence and regular clashes between militants and federal forces.