Five people were killed in a shootout between police and a group of unidentified assailants that were apparently staging an armed robbery in the western Kazakh city of Aktobe on Sunday, local media reported.

Citing eye-witnesses, Kazinform, the national news agency of Kazakhstan, reported that a group of unidentified men robbed two weapon shops in Aktobe and a shootout broke out when a local police force arrived.

Some media reports cited an "official representative" of the Interior Ministry, Almas Sadubaev, as saying that units of the National Guard exchanged fire with the assailants on the scene, resulting in the death of one officer and one soldier.

Sadubaev also said that three of the assailants were killed, one was arrested, and several others managed to escape from the scene and remain at large so far.

Aktobe, a city near the Russian border, was the site of one of Kazakhstan's first terrorist attacks, where a suicide bomber set off an explosive device in the headquarters of the Kazakh security services in 2011. 

source : xinhua