MOSCOW, Oct 10 (AFP) - Three Chechen separatist fighters were killed and eight civilians, including five children, were wounded Sunday in Ingushetia, a region bordering Chechnya, an Ingush interior ministry official told RIA-Novosti.
Two members of Russian special forces were also wounded in the course of the operation, the unidentified official added.
The three militants were killed in Ingushetia's main city Nazran and were believed to have been under the command of Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, who has claimed responsibility for the Beslan hostage crisis last month, ministry officials told the Russian news agencies.
Five children and three women were wounded in the shootout, which erupted as Russian forces tried to arrest the three Chechen rebels in a Nazran house, the ministry official quoted by RIA-Novosti said.
"Civilians found themselves in the shootout zone," the official said.
"We have established that three women and five children have been wounded. They have all been hospitalized in the city's hospital," he added.
Basayev has claimed responsibility for the three-day hostage taking last month at a school in Beslan, southern Russia, in which at least 339 people died, more than half of them children.
One of the fighters killed Sunday, identified as Magomet Khashiyev, took part in deadly Chechen rebel raids into Ingushetia last June, the ministry official quoted by RIA-Novosti said.
In coordinated raids overnight June 22, several hundred rebels attacked government buildings and police checkpoints in Ingushetia, killing 88 people -- mostly law enforcement officials -- before escaping at dawn. Two rebels were also reported killed.
Both Basayev and Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov claimed responsibility for the attacks.
After being forced by rebels to withdraw from Chechnya after a war in 1994-96, Russia sent troops in again in October 1999 for what was initially presented as a lightning-strike anti-terror operation, but has been going on for five years.