Government forces fought with about 10 gunmen in the Shali district, Chechen Interior Ministry spokesman Magomed Deniyev said.

Fighting persists in Chechnya nearly a decade after the end of large-scale battles in the separatist wars that devastated the mostly Muslim province in the 1990s.

It has also spread to neighboring provinces in Russia's restive Caucasus. In Dagestan, east of Chechnya, a bomb blast damaged a gas pipeline late Wednesday, cutting off supplies to much of the provincial capital, Makhachkala, and an officer was killed when gunmen fired at a police post in the town of Khasavyurt, the Interfax news agency reported.

In Chechnya, Deniyev said four militants were killed and authorities believe an Arab militant leader known as Yasir was wounded but avoided capture, fleeing into the forest with other survivors. Deniyev reported no casualties among government forces.

He said Chechnya's Moscow-backed president, Ramzan Kadyrov, was leading an operation to "find and completely destroy" the militant group.

Separately Wednesday, Kadyrov's office said Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has granted Kadyrov the rank of police major general _ an honor for the strongman whom human rights activists blame for what they say are widespread abuses in Chechnya. Kremlin officials could not immediately be reached for comment late Wednesday.

Kadyrov recently won a libel suit he filed against a human rights activist who said Kadyrov bore responsibility for the July abduction and killing of Natalya Estemirova, a prominent activist in Chechnya whose death prompted international indignation.