The police in Rio de Janeiro say a Russian diplomat trying to repel an attempted robbery near the Olympic Park was involved in a shooting that left the assailant dead. The Russian embassy denied any of their employees were involved in the incident.

The police say the diplomat wrestled with a gunman who was trying to rob him, causing the weapon to go off and killing the criminal. In a statement to The Associated Press, the Russians refuted the police report.

"There must be a misunderstanding,'' the embassy said in an email late Thursday.

The Russian government also said its representatives are not armed. It pointed out that consulate officials are "Russian citizens with Russian names,'' contrary to media reports that gave a Brazilian-sounding name.

Authorities did not officially identify any of the people involved in the incident and only said the man who was attacked was a lawyer and a vice consul for Russia.

The Daily Mail earlier reported that Marcos Cesar Feres Braga, a Brazilian lawyer who holds the vice-consul post at the Russian consulate, grabbed his motorbike-riding assailant and pulled him into his car before the assailant's gun went off in a struggle over the weapon, killing him.

The mugger struck at around midday Thursday as Braga was waiting for traffic to start moving again after the Olympic torch had passed by on Avenida das Americas in the Barra da Tijuca district of Rio, close to the Olympic Park and athletes' village, the Daily Mail reported.

"The vice consul got into a physical confrontation with the aggressor, and during the fight, the assailant's gun was fired several times,'' said the police statement. The homicide unit opened an investigation.

The shooting comes amid heightened security during the Olympics, with 80,000 members of the Brazilian military bolstering police resources.

Information from The Associated Press and AAP was used in this report.