* Two police shot dead in southern Russia * Attacks occur hours after Medvedev visit * Medvedev says growing violence is challenge to state (Adds report of gunmen attacking police station) MAKHACHKALA, Russia, June 9 (Reuters) - Gunmen shot dead two policemen in the volatile Russian region of Dagestan on Tuesday, hours after President Dmitry Medvedev sought to rally officials there in their fight against Islamist insurgents. Medvedev met top officials in Dagestan, a patchwork of different ethnic groups that borders Chechnya, to assess a growing insurgency a week after the province's Interior Minister was shot dead by a sniper at a wedding celebration. "This is a cynical challenge to the authorities, to the state," Medvedev said of the minister's murder at a meeting of security council officials on the edge of the regional capital Makhachkala. "Law enforcement must do everything to quickly track down the criminals," said Medvedev. But a few hours later a special forces officer was shot dead in a machinegun attack near his home in the village of Tyube, 30 km (18 miles) from where Medvedev spoke, police spokesman Mark Tolchinsky said. On Tuesday evening, a traffic police officer was shot dead near the town of Kizlyar, 120 km (75 miles) northwest of Makhachkala, Tolchinsky said. Interfax news agency reported that 10 armed rebels attacked a police station near the village of Karabudakhkent, 30 km (18 miles) south of Makhachkala, at around midnight. There were no casualties in the attack, Interfax quoted an unnamed source at the police station as saying. One of the most populous regions in the mainly Muslim north Caucasus, Dagestan borders Chechnya where Russia has fought two wars since the mid-1990s to crush Islamist separatists. As security in Chechnya has improved, instability has worsened elsewhere in the area, where poverty and violence provide a fertile recruiting ground for militants. Analysts say Moscow's fragile control over the north Caucasus could be undermined by the global economic downturn which threatens generous subsidies handed out by the Kremlin. Medvedev warned officials that poverty, corruption and poor governance were threatening the stability of Dagestan. "This extremism is being delivered from abroad when riff-raff of all kinds is coming to foul on our land," he said in comments broadcast on all of Russia's main television channels. After the meeting, Medvedev inspected high-tech automatic weapons and spoke to commandos after they abseiled down a building amid explosions in an anti-terrorism drill. (Writing by Conor Humphries; Editing by Richard Balmforth)
People take pictures with a cellular phone of a man walking along a flooded street after a storm in Russia's southern city of Stavropol June 5, 2009. REUTERS/Eduard Korniyenko (RUSSIA ENVIRONMENT ...
