MOSCOW (AP) — Russia’s southern Dagestan region held the first of three days of mourning Monday following an attack by Islamic militants who killed 19 people, most of them police officers, and attacked places of worship in attacks apparently coordinated in two cities.
Sunday’s violence was the latest blamed by authorities on Islamic extremists in the predominantly Muslim North Caucasus region, as well as the deadliest in Russia since March, when armed men opened fire at a concert in the suburbs of Moscow, killing 145 people.
The March attack was claimed by an affiliate of the Islamic State group. but no one has come forward to claim responsibility for Sunday’s attacks in Dagestan’s regional capital, Makhachkala, and nearby Derbent, both adjacent to the Caspian Sea.
Dagestan’s governor, Sergei Melikov, blamed members of Islamic “sleeper cells” run from abroad, but gave no other details. He said in a video statement that the attackers intended to “sow panic and fear” and tried to link the attack to Moscow’s military action in Ukraine – but he also provided no evidence.
President Vladimir Putin attempted to blame the March attack on Ukraine, again without evidence and despite claims of responsibility by the Islamic State affiliate. Kyiv has vehemently denied any involvement.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin had received reports about Sunday’s attacks and efforts to help the victims.
The Investigative Committee, the country’s main state criminal investigation agency, said all five attackers were killed. Of the 19 people killed, 15 were police officers.
Among the dead was Reverend Nikolai Kotelnikov, a 66-year-old Russian Orthodox priest from a church in Derbent. The attackers slit his throat before setting fire to the church, according to Shamil Khadulayev, deputy head of a local public oversight body.
The Kele-Numaz synagogue in Derbent was also burned down.
Shortly after the attacks in Derbent, militants opened fire on a police post in Makhachkala and attacked a Russian Orthodox Church and a synagogue before being hunted down and killed by special forces.
Russian media said the attackers included the two sons and a nephew of Magomed Omarov, head of the Kremlin’s main party, the regional branch of United Russia in Dagestan. Omarov was detained by police for questioning and United Russia quickly dismissed him from its ranks.
In the early 2000s, Dagestan saw almost daily attacks on police and other authorities, blamed on extremist militants. After the emergence of the Islamic State group, many residents of the region joined it in Syria and Iraq.
Violence in Dagestan has declined in recent years, but in a sign that extremist sentiments are still prevalent in the region, crowds have rioted in the airport there in October, targeting a flight from Israel. More than 20 people were injured – none of them Israeli – when hundreds of men, some carrying banners with anti-Semitic slogans, rushed onto the runway, chased passengers and threw stones at police.
The airport violence challenged the Kremlin’s narrative that ethnic and religious groups coexist in harmony in Russia.
Following the March attack on a Moscow concert hall, Russia’s top security agency said it had dismantled what it called a “terrorist cell” in southern Russia and detained four of its members who had supplied weapons and money to alleged attackers. in Moscow.
