The Ingush sports and tourism minister was shot dead when his car was attacked in Russia's North Caucasus region on Friday morning, news agencies reported.

The vehicle carrying the regional minister Ruslan Balayev and his driver was fired at in the village of Sredniye Achaluki, leaving both of them dead on the scene, Interfax quoted an interior official as saying.

The incident follows a series of attacks on officials in the troubled North Caucasus. The leader of Ingushetia, Yunus-bek Yevkurov, was injured in an assassination attempt last month.

The North Caucasus republics of Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan have seen a rise of violence in recent months.

The Kremlin in April formally ended an anti-terrorist operation in Chechnya, which has experienced two bloody separatist wars in the past 15 years.

(Xinhua News Agency July 17, 2009)