- Author, Henri Astier and Laura Gozzi
- Role, BBC News
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Attacks on police posts, churches and a synagogue in Russia’s North Caucasus republic of Dagestan have left 19 cops and a number of civilians useless. Six gunmen had been additionally killed.
At least sixteen individuals had been taken to hospitals with accidents.
Three days of mourning have been declared in Dagestan, a predominantly Muslim republic in southern Russia which neighbours Chechnya.
The apparently coordinated attacks focused the cities of Derbent and Makhachkala on the Orthodox competition of Pentecost, with an Orthodox priest amongst these killed.
He was later recognized by the top of the Republic of Dagestan, Sergei Melikov, as Father Nikolai Kotelnikov, who had served in Derbent for greater than 40 years.
Footage posted on social media confirmed individuals carrying darkish garments capturing at police vehicles, earlier than a convoy of emergency service automobiles arrive on the scene.
In Derbent – residence to an historic Jewish group – gunmen attacked a synagogue and a church, which had been then set on hearth.
Dagestan has in the previous been the scene of Islamist attacks.
Although the assailants haven’t been formally recognized, Russian media broadly reported that among the many gunmen had been two sons of the top of the Sergokalinsky district close to Makhachkala, Magomed Omarov, Osman and Adil. Mr Omarov was detained by police.
However, in a video posted on Telegram, the republic’s head, Sergei Melikov, implied Ukraine had been concerned in the assault and that Dagestan was now immediately concerned in Russia’s battle in Ukraine.
“We understand who is behind the organisation of the terrorist attacks and what goal they pursued,” he stated.
The head of the Russian State Duma’s worldwide affairs committee, Leonid Slutsky, put ahead related claims, saying that the Dagestan attacks and a missile strike which killed 4 in Russia-occupied Sevastopol on Sunday “could not be a coincidence”.
“These tragic events, I am sure, were orchestrated from abroad and are aimed at sowing panic and dividing the Russian people,” Mr Slutsky stated.
But a number one Russian nationalist in occupied Ukraine, Dmitry Rogozin, warned that if each assault was blamed on “the machinations of Ukraine and Nato, this pink mist will lead us to big problems”.
An assault on the Crocus City Hall venue close to Moscow in March which left 147 useless was blamed by Russian authorities on Ukraine and the West, although the Islamic State group claimed it.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated Russia’s President Vladimir Putin provided his condolences to those that misplaced family members in the attacks on Crimea and Dagestan.
Russian information companies reported on Monday morning that the counter-terrorism operation launched after the attacks had now come to an finish.
Between 2007 and 2017, a jihadist organisation known as the Caucasus Emirate, and later the Islamic Emirate of the Caucasus, staged attacks in Dagestan and the neighbouring Russian republics of Chechnya, Ingushetia and Kabardino-Balkaria.
Following the Crocus City Hall assault in Moscow, President Vladimir Putin had insisted that “Russia can’t be the goal of terrorist attacks by Islamic fundamentalists” as a result of it “demonstrates a unique example of interfaith harmony and inter-religious and inter-ethnic unity”.
However, three months in the past Russia’s home safety service, the FSB, reported that it had thwarted an IS plot to assault a Moscow synagogue.
