MOSCOW: A female suicide bomber has killed at least five policemen by blowing herself up at a traffic police post in the restive Dagestan region of southern Russia.

The woman detonated her bomb late on Tuesday outside Karabudakhkent, a village 40 km south of the provincial capital Makhachkala, Russia's RIA news agency quoted local police as saying.

Dagestan faces almost daily shootings and bomb attacks as part of an insurgency across the mainly Muslim North Caucasus following two separatist wars in Chechnya.

“The female terrorist approached the (traffic police) enclosure and blew herself up,” the police official said.

Dagestan faces almost daily shootings and bomb attacks as part of an insurgency across the mainly Muslim North Caucasus following two separatist wars in Chechnya.

An unofficial website, www.kavkazcenter.com. said up to 10 policemen had been killed in the attack and that it was carried out by a woman suicide bomber supported by insurgents who executed policemen wounded during the blast.

The rebels want to create an Islamic state ruled by sharia in the region, which is close Sochi, where Russia will host the winter Olympics in 2014.

The insurgents said they carried out a suicide bombing at Moscow's Domodedovo airport that killed 37 people in January 2011, and twin bombings that killed 40 people on Moscow's metro in 2010.