Moscow, Aug 14 (DPA) Suspected Muslim rebels killed 11 people in an attack on a police post in the Russian region of Dagestan Thursday evening, local officials said.

Some 15 masked gunmen sprayed bullets at the building, killing four policemen and seven young women who were in an adjacent sauna, Dagestan's Interior Ministry said in the capital, Makhachkala.

The attackers later fled, according to the Russian news agency Interfax.

There has been a spate of violence recently in Dagestan and other regions of the predominantly Muslim north Caucasus such as Chechnya and Ingushetia.

The violence involves both criminal gangs and Islamic extremists who are fighting to end Russian dominance.