Not less than 15 legislation enforcement officers and 4 civilians have been killed in two seemingly coordinated assaults by gunmen in Russia’s southern republic of Dagestan, Russian investigators mentioned on Monday.
Wielding rifles and Molotov cocktails, the attackers assaulted synagogues and Orthodox church buildings on Sunday evening in two main cities of Dagestan, a predominantly Muslim area on the Caspian Sea.
One of many civilians killed was Nikolai Kotelnikov, a priest within the metropolis of Derbent. The attackers additionally set hearth to a synagogue within the metropolis.
For hours, the gunmen have been on the free, participating in taking pictures sprees with members of the legislation enforcement, in accordance with statements from the area’s inside ministry. 5 attackers have been ultimately killed, native officers mentioned.
Russian investigators designated the assault an act of terrorism, however it was not instantly clear who was accountable.
Native officers declared a three-day mourning interval in Dagestan, a multireligious and ethnically various area, and mentioned households of the victims would obtain particular compensation.
The Kremlin spokesman mentioned on Monday that President Vladimir V. Putin was receiving common studies on the assault, however that he didn’t plan to handle the nation about it. The spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, declined to touch upon the gunmen’s motives.
The assault was the newest in a sequence of acts of extremist violence in Russia in current months, underlining the nation’s advanced safety challenges because it stays slowed down in a conflict towards neighboring Ukraine.
In March, 4 gunmen killed 145 individuals at a live performance corridor close to Moscow in an assault claimed by the Islamic State. And in Dagestan final October, a mob, apparently looking for Jewish passengers, stormed a aircraft arriving from Tel Aviv.
Russian officers tried to masks intelligence failures surrounding the Moscow live performance corridor assault by blaming it on the West and Ukraine, with out offering proof. And preliminary statements by officers after Sunday’s assault instructed that the federal government might undertake an analogous tactic in Dagestan.
“We perceive who’s behind these acts of terror,” Sergei Melikov, the highest official of Dagestan, mentioned in an deal with to its residents. He made a comparability between the victims of the assault and Russian troopers preventing in Ukraine, saying they have been going through the identical enemy.
“We have to perceive that conflict comes into our dwelling,” Mr. Melikov added.
Mr. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, in his every day information briefing on Monday appeared to attract a connection between the Dagestan violence and a separate assault by Ukraine on Sunday on occupied Crimea. He didn’t, nevertheless, straight blame Ukraine or the West for the assault in Dagestan.
Russia’s antiterrorism committee, a physique that coordinates the combat towards terrorism within the nation, mentioned in an announcement that two attackers had been killed in Derbent and three extra in Makhachkala. It mentioned that legislation enforcement officers have been in search of accomplices.
The investigators didn’t disclose their identities, and their motives weren’t instantly clear.
The company additionally posted a video exhibiting burned vehicles, weapons in swimming pools of blood and closely armed safety service officers chasing the obvious perpetrators inside an Orthodox church. The video couldn’t be independently verified.
Mr. Melikov mentioned a manhunt would proceed within the republic till “all members of extremist sleeping cells” that have been “undoubtedly ready additionally from overseas” have been caught.
On Monday, he visited the websites of assault in Derbent. He walked via the halls of the native synagogue, dwelling to one of many oldest Jewish communities in Russia. The synagogue’s primary corridor was burned down because of the assault, in accordance with a video posted by the regional authorities. That video additionally couldn’t be independently verified.
Oleg Matsnev contributed analysis.
