Attackers who opened fire on police in the Macedonian town of Kumanovo have turned themselves in to police, local news outlets report.

Some 27 assaulters hiding in dwellings after a shootout with police officers have handed themselves over.

Authorities, however, are yet to confirm.

A police operation to hunt them down followed Sunday's incidents in which three police officers were killed and several others were injured, the Macedonian Interior Minister has said in a statement.

Ivo Kotevski, Spokesperson for Macedonia’s Interior Ministry, said that police had managed to dismantle a well-trained heavily armed terrorist group.

He claimed that they had been planning attacks on state institutions.

Macedonian news agency MIA puts the number of injured at 20, arguing a large number of those taken to hospital were police officers.

In the Diva Naselba neighborhood of Kumanovo where the events were unfolding, an evacuation was carried out in the evening, and rifle and sniper shots could be hear all around, Toshe Ognyanov, a journalist at English-language website Independent told Novinite's Bulgarian version earlier on Saturday.

"Nothing has so far been said about members of the armed group. None of the institutions has so far commented on their identity... Their nationality should not be commented until it has been officially announced," Ognyanov said.

Kumanovo is located in a region which was part of unrest and ethnic clashes between the Albanian minority and the Slavic population in 2001.

Earlier on Saturday, the same separatist organization seeking northwestern Macedonia's secession in 2001 claimed responsibility for the attacks.