Streets are isolated and on alert in Rostov, Russia, after six detainees, some with links to the Islamic State, took guards hostage at a pre-trial detention center and placed conditions on their release. A riot that lasted a few hours and ended with the prisoners “neutralized” and the warders unharmed, according to the prison authorities.
It’s Sunday morning when a group of men, including some already convicted of terrorism crimes, knock down the bars of a window in their cell and enter a guard room. Here they take two prison officers hostageaccording to the Telegram channel Baza which spreads the images.
According to the Russian Interfax agency, the group is asking for a car and a free ride to leave the prison. A video is circulating online, also taken by Nexta TV, a Belarusian media considered to be opposition, which shows two men with ISIS symbols and one of the two with a knife in his hand holding the guards prisoner. The channel also publishes the names of the attackers but this is unverified information.
Late in the morning the press service of the Federal Penitentiary Service announced that the inmates had been “neutralised” and the hostages had been freed. “The criminals were neutralized and the employees held hostage were released and were not harmed during the special operation” while images from official Russian TV show the streets closed around the detention center.
