By Alkha Tosuyev
AZAN YURT, Russia, June 18 (Reuters) - At least seven Russian police and interior ministry troops were killed in two separate clashes on the borders of the breakaway Chechnya region overnight, police said on Friday.
A police spokeswoman in Dagestan, another troubled Russian province to the east of Chechnya, told Reuters by telephone that three interior ministry troops had been killed and 14 injured in a battle at the Chechen border that raged all night.
Chechen border forces at the scene denied they were responsible for the attack.
In a separate incident in Stavropol, to the north of Chechnya, four policemen were killed and a fifth was still missing after gunmen attacked their jeep at the Chechen border, a police duty officer told Reuters by telephone.
The attack in Dagestan was the latest flare-up at a tense and heavily-armed border that has seen several major clashes in recent months.
Itar-Tass news agency said the Russian forces in Dagestan had come under mortar attack throughout the night and had responded with "all types of weapons" including, by morning, helicopters firing rockets into Chechnya.
But at the Chechen border post, the village of Azan Yurt 1.5 km (one mile) inside the region from the Dagestan border crossing, Chechen border guards said they had not fired back after Russians had opened fire on them.
Salman Amayev, head of the Chechen border post, said if there had been any attack on the Russian border post it must have come from the Dagestani side of the border. He said there had been no reports of dead or wounded on the Chechen side.
A Reuters correspondent saw one Chechen house freshly destroyed in what residents said was a Russian helicopter rocket attack. The area was quiet on Friday afternoon.
Largely Moslem Chechnya claims independence from Russia, which withdrew its troops from the region after a humiliating defeat in a 1994-96 war that killed tens of thousands.
Since the war, Chechnya and surrounding regions have been plagued by ethnic, religious and criminal violence. Moscow estimates that between 500 and 800 Russians are being held hostage by gangs in Chechnya.
Russian Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin met Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov only last week. Ending violence along the frontier and kidnappings in and around the province was one of the main topics on their agenda.
Russian news agencies quoted Maskhadov as saying on Friday that the overnight clashes were organised by people who hoped to scupper a planned meeting between him and President Boris Yeltsin set for coming weeks.