MOSCOW, September 30 (RIA Novosti) – Two militants believed to be members of an international terrorist organization were killed by security forces in Russia’s North Caucasus republic of Kabardino-Balkaria, Russia’s National Antiterrorism Committee (NAC) said Monday.

Three people were traveling in a car when they were stopped for a check Sunday evening, and offered resistance, the committee said in a statement. Two were killed by return fire at the scene while the third was injured but managed to escape.

The two militants killed were “active members of the local cell of an international terrorist organization, the Caucasus Emirate,” the NAC said in a statement, adding that they had been involved in a number of attacks on police and security officers.

The Caucasus Emirate group is headed by Chechen militant Doku Umarov and has declared its allegiance to the global jihadi movement.

Attacks on security forces, police and civilians occur regularly in the North Caucasus, generated by ethnic, religious and political rivalries, as well as poverty and corruption. The violence is also fed by an Islamist insurgency, which has been especially resilient in Dagestan and fueled a series of bloody post-Soviet separatist wars in the neighboring republic of Chechnya.