An unknown attacker has shot and killed a chief accountant in the police department in Russia's restive North Caucasus region of Daghestan.

Daghestani officials said on May 6 that the police captain, whose name was not disclosed, was shot dead overnight near his home in the southwestern region of Suleiman-Stal.

Daghestan has become the epicenter of violence for militants seeking to establish an Islamic state in the North Caucasus.

It also is affected by deadly violence linked to criminal groups and to an Islamist insurgency rooted in separatist wars in neighboring Chechnya during the 1990s.

Police, government officials, and moderate Muslims are often targeted in the attacks.

Based on reporting by TASS and Interfax