Russia’s main anti-terror agency says its forces have killed five suspected militants during a raid in the restive province of Dagestan in southern Russia.

The National Anti-Terrorist Committee said in a statement that the militants were killed Friday in Derbent on the Caspian Sea. It said that security forces acting on a tip surrounded a house where the militants were holed up. They refused to surrender and were killed in a gunfight.

The Committee said that one of the suspects was the leader of a group of militants suspected of staging a series of attacks on police and other authorities and running an extortion racket targeting local businesses.

Dagestan has become the epicenter of an Islamic rebellion that spread across Russia’s North Caucasus region after two separatist wars in Chechnya.