Tanks opened fire around 5 am, shelling the outskirts of the village for around 40 minutes from the neighbouring Russian republic of Ingushetia, ITAR-TASS news agency said, citing the Ingush interior ministry.

No further details of the incident were immediately available.

Local officials in the southern Russian district of Stavropol meanwhile said the North Caucasus Army group had penetrated up to five kilometres into the Chechen territory in the districts of Naursky and Shelkovsky.

Government troops had secured the high ground and were reinforcing positions to guard against a counter-attack by Chechen forces, ITAR-TASS said, quoting the press service of the local administration.

The news came the day after Chechen fighters clashed with advancing Russian troops in northern Chechnya.

General ValeryManilov, Russia's Deputy Chief of Staff, said Russian troops had advanced into Chechen territory in three separate places as part of an operation to cut off Chechnya from the rest of the federation.Russian forces moved into Chechnya "by several metres to several kilometres," said Manilov, without giving details of where troops were fighting. A Chechen official, Taus Vagurayev, said however that fighting had broken out in several villages in northern Chechnya, including Rubyezhnoye, Ishcherskaya, Chernokozovo, Alpatovo and Savelyevskaya in the Naurskaya district.

In northeastern Chechnya, near the border with neighbouring Dagestan, elders from the village of Borozdinovskaya on Sunday pleaded with military commanders not to send troops into the settlement, said ITAR-TASS.

Russian officers said they would only agree to keep troops out of the village if interior ministry forces were allowed to conduct house-to-house searches to ensure no Chechen fighters remained in the area. Army commanders meanwhile beefedup security at the entrance to the village as they awaited a response to their offer, ITAR-TASS said.

Separately, artillery gunners based in Dagestan destroyed 18 vehicles, including five trucks, belonging to Chechen fighters, and killed some 30 "extremists," ITAR-TASS said.

Russia began a massive security operation last month in response to a series of incursions into Dagestan by Islamic guerrillas based in Chechnya, and a wave of bomb attacks on residential blocks across Russia which have killed 292 people since September 4.

Moscow blames militants behind the Dagestan insurgencies for the bomb attacks, saying the ongoing military operation is a war against terrorism, not a repeat of it s disastrous 1994-96 bid to smash Chechnya's independence drive.