Ingush authorities have announced three-days' of mourning in the republic and pledged to pay 100,000-ruble ($3,000) and 50,000-ruble ($1,500) in compensation to the families of those killed and injured, respectively, media reports said.

Russia's emergency ministry has dispatched a plane to Ingushetia carrying medical experts and aid for the victims.

Russia's mainly Muslim North Caucasus regions have seen a rise in violence in recent months.

Attacks on officials have been reported almost daily in Ingushetia and in neighbouring Dagestan that border Chechnya, which saw two separatist wars in the late 1990s.

Ingushetia's construction minister was gunned down in his office last Wednesday. The murder followed the killing of a supreme court judge and the attempted assassination of the republic's president, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, in late June.

President Dmitry Medvedev has called the increase in terrorist activity in the Caucasus 'an attempt to destabilise the situation in the region.'

--RIA Novosti

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