MAKHACHKALA, Russia - A pair of suicide bombers, including a woman, attacked security forces in Russia's volatile Dagestan province on Monday, killing two security officials and wounding 21 others, according to officials and news reports.

The female suicide bomber blew herself up as she tried to enter a police station in the village of Gubden _ known as a stronghold of radical Islamists _ killing one soldier and wounding six others, regional police spokesman Vyacheslav Gasanov said.

Several hours later, after Gudben was cordoned off by police and the military, another suicide bomber rammed his explosivces-laden car near a police post, killing a police officer and wounding 17 other security personel, the Interfax news agency reported.

The village where the attacks happened is about 60 kilometers (40 miles) south of Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, the largest and most ethnically diverse province of the predominantly Muslim Northern Caucasus region. The province has been beset by almost daily violence that stems from two separatist wars in neighboring Chechnya.

In Gubden, a mountanous village of 16,000, even small girls wear headscarves, and alcohol is strictly prohibited. Many of its younger residents have joined Islamic militants who roam the hills and regularly attack government forces and some of the villagers who embrace moderate Islam.

In response, the security forces are alleged to have abducted villagers with suspected ties to the militants, some of whom were later found dead with broken limbs and other signs of torture, according to Memorial, a respected human rights group.

Russian officials have alleged that a woman from Gubden killed herself in a rented Moscow apartment in late January while assembling an explosive for a suicide attack on Red Square on New Year's eve, while a 28-year-old schoolteacher from the same village was one of the two suicide bombers who killed 40 people on the Moscow subway last March.

The 28-year-old's father told The Associated Press she was abducted and drugged before the attack, but officials said later that she volunteered to blow herself up after her husband, an Islamist leader, was killed by federal forces in August 2010.

Also on Monday, a suspected Islamic militant was killed in a shootout with security forces outside Makhachkala on Monday, Gasanov said. Two policemen were wounded in the shootout.

Islamic militants have stepped up their attacks on military, police and civilians both in Northern Caucasus provinces and in central Russia. A 20-year-old suicide bomber from Ingushetia, another province that borders Chechnya, blew himself up at Moscow's busiest airport last month, killing 36 and wounding more than 180 people.