AGI – Six officers were killed and 23 injured in separate shootings in two cities in Daghhestan where a synagogue and two churches were also set on fire. According to initial information, some armed men attacked religious sites and a police checkpoint in the cities of Derbent and Makhachkala. In addition to the officers, a priest was also killed.
Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev called the “massacre in Dagestan” a “cowardly terrorist attack, like the attack on Sevastopol”.
“Everything that happened in Crimea was not a military action, but a vile and atrocious terrorist attack against our people, committed on an Orthodox holiday, like the massacre in Dagestan, carried out by extremists. For us there is no difference between the Bandera regime (Ukrainian ultranationalist leader during the Second World War, ed.) and the crazy fanatics”, he wrote on Telegram.
Dagestan is a Muslim-majority Russian region bordering Chechnya, also close to Georgia and Azerbaijan. For the regional leader, Sergei Melikov, the attacks are “an attempt to destabilize society”.
In the capital Makhachkala and the coastal city of Derbent, authorities have established a state of emergency and opened a criminal investigation into “terrorist acts”. In the streets of the two cities they shoot again and the population was asked to stay at home. The Interior Ministry has denied rumors that a hostage crisis is taking place in an Orthodox church in Makhachkala.
The 66-year-old priest was killed in Derbent where the synagogue was also set on fire and two people died: a police officer and a security guard. The Makhachkala synagogue was also set on fire.
In Derbent the police have surrounded the terrorists and are preparing to raid a building near a restaurant. “Special services agents surrounded the area and blocked the terrorists,” a source said.
The firefighters were called back half-burnt synagogue for fear that there were still terrorists inside. The main fire has been put out, but outbreaks remain and shooting continues in the surrounding streets, the head of the Public Council of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia (FEOR), Borukh Gorin, told Ria Novosti. The Jewish community of Derbent numbers around 300 people.
4 militiamen killed
Four militiamen were killed in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan. The Interior Ministry reported this on Telegram. Meanwhile, Ria Novosti reports, in a square in the center of the village of Sergokala, 80 kilometers south of Makhachkala, unknown persons fired at a police car, wounding an officer.
