Death toll in Russian terror assault climbs to twenty

At least 20 people were slaughtered when gunmen stormed religious sites and a police checkpoint yesterday in southern Russia, in a terror attack that some local officials tried to blame on the West.

Horrific footage showed black-clad militants stalking through the streets setting fire to places of worship before unleashing a torrent of bullets from automatic rifles at police officers and innocent bystanders. 

The casualties so far include 15 law enforcement officers, three civilians and a priest who reportedly had his throat slit by one attacker, with dozens more victims hospitalised with gunshot wounds and burns. 

The attack – which comes after gunmen killed some 145 people in a massacre at a Moscow concert hall in March – unfolded in several locations in the tinderbox region of Dagestan, a largely Muslim region that borders Georgia and Azerbaijan. 

Regional governor Sergei Melikov and Dagestan MP Abdulkhakim Gadzhiyev both spoke of potential Western involvement, with Gadzhiyev claiming that ‘the intelligence services of Ukraine and NATO countries’ may have helped to orchestrate the shootings. 

But their attempt to pin the attack on the West swiftly fell apart, after Magomed Omarov, the head of Dagestan’s Sergokalinsky district, was arrested when officers learned two of his sons had taken part in the shootings. 

During the interrogation, Omarov reportedly admitted to investigators he knew his sons harboured ‘extremist ideas’ and were strict adherents to Wahhabism – a particularly radical sect of Islam – before claiming he had no contact with them. 

Another of the shooters was said to be a mixed martial arts fighter affiliated with the gym operated by former UFC Lightweight Champion Khabib Nurmagomedov, one of Dagestan’s most internationally celebrated individuals . 

Shocking footage circulating on the Telegram messaging app showed how hundreds of civilians desperately fled the scene of the shootings in Derbent, where the attacks knocked out power in the city centre yesterday. 

Other footage taken by police officers captured the moment the cops and FSB security teams engaged the gunmen in an urban firefight.

One policeman can be heard cursing as he told his comrades he had been shot in the hand.  

A synagogue in the regional capital Makhachkala was engulfed in flames amid the attacks, with smoke seen pouring from the building.

Another group of attackers set fire to a second synagogue in Derbent, the southernmost city in Russia which lies roughly 80 miles further south. 

There the gunmen also attacked a pair of Orthodox churches where they reportedly slit the throat of a priest. 

He was later named as 66-year-old Father Nikolai Kotelnikov, who served more than 40 years in Derbent. 

The synagogue attacked and set ablaze by the gunmen in Derbent is the only place of worship for the city’s ancient Jewish community.

The chairman of the public council of Russia’s Federation of Jewish Communities, Boruch Gorin, wrote late last night that it had not been possible to extinguish the fire at the synagogue. 

He wrote: ‘The synagogue in Makhachkala has also been set on fire and burnt down,’ before adding that firefighters at the religious site in Derbent had been told to leave the burning synagogue because of the risk that ‘terrorists remained inside’.

Regional governor Melikov this morning said the ‘bandits’ had been ‘eliminated’ as clips showed members of Russia’s FSB security service standing over bloodied corpses at the scene of the shootings. 

Melikov was later seen standing outside the burnt-out facade of the synagogue in Derbent as he toured the city with investigators. 

In a video statement this morning, Melikov said that the situation in the region was now under control of the law enforcement and local authorities. 

He vowed that the investigation will continue until ‘all the sleeping cells’ of the militants are uncovered and claimed, without providing evidence, that the attacks might have been prepared from abroad and referenced what the Kremlin calls ‘the special military operation’ in Ukraine in an apparent attempt to link the attacks.

His statement echoed that of MP Gadzhiyev, who alleged ‘the intelligence services of Ukraine and NATO countries may be behind this because we are developing success in the [war] on all fronts’.

But former Russian deputy premier Dmitry Rogozin dismissed the bid to blame the West and Ukraine for the bloodbath, as the FSB has sought to do over the attack in Moscow earlier this year. 

‘If we write off every terrorist attack, mixed up with national and religious intolerance, hatred and Russophobia, to the intrigues of Ukraine and NATO, this pink fog will lead us to big problems,’ he warned.

It was ‘high time’ Moscow realised that Russia has its own homegrown problems, he said.

Russia’s FSB security service in April said it had arrested four people in Dagestan on suspicion of plotting the attack on Moscow’s Crocus City Hall concert venue claimed by ISIS-K.

Authorities are now probing Dagestani official Omarov, whose sons Osman, 30, and Adil, 37, were among the gunmen who slaughtered innocent civilians and attacked the places of worship. 

He has also been ejected from Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party while investigations continue. 

Before he was gunned down, Osman posted a chilling video showing the synagogue in Makhachkala on fire, declaring: ‘Behold, inshallah….Here is their synagogue burning.

‘Inshallah, Allah be praised, let these infidels… be humiliated. We will kill them like this, humiliate them, and the word of Allah will be exalted.

‘Inshallah, Allahu Akbar!’

Another of the shooters is believed to have been mixed martial arts fighter Gadzhimurad Kagirov, who was affiliated with the gym operated by former UFC Lightweight Champion Khabib Nurmagomedov, who rose to public recognition after defeating Irish superstar Conor McGregor in 2018.

Kagirov, whose professional record is two wins and no losses, fought out of Eagles MMA, the gym headed by Nurmagomedov that is also home to the current UFC Lightweight Champion Islam Makhachev. 

Nurmagomedov shared a statement on Instagram following the attacks, but did not make any mention of Kagirov.

‘My condolences to all the relatives and friends of the victims,’ he wrote. 

‘May Allah save us all from such situations and grant us a peaceful sky over our heads.

‘Take care of yourself and your loved ones, and let everyone take a look around at whom they and their children are interacting with. 

‘Educating souls is more important than educating bodies.’

Meanwhile, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, called for resistance to any attempts to radicalise religion.

‘I am convinced that it is necessary to do everything possible to exclude the very possibility of attempts to radicalise religious life, to stop any manifestations of extremism and interethnic hostility in any form,’ Kirill said.

‘The present and future of our country largely depends on this.’

Dagestan has seen a series of anti-Semitic events in the past year, most notably when a mob stormed the airport in Makhachkala to search for Jewish passengers from Israel in the weeks following Hamas’ October 7 attacks on the Nova music festival in Re’im and several kibbutzim across the border from Gaza.

The attacks on the religious sites across Dagestan come just months after a deadly terrorist attack in Moscow took the lives of 145 people. 

Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISIS-K), a particularly brutal sect of ISIS, slaughtered innocent concertgoers who went to see the Russian band Picnic at the Crocus City Hall concert venue in March this year. 

After shooting up the venue and setting it alight, 145 people died while 551 people were injured by gunfire or burns. 

At that time, Russian officials also sought to link Ukraine to the attack without providing any evidence. Kyiv has vehemently denied any involvement.

ISIS-K takes its name from Khorasan – an old Persian term for the region that included parts of Iran, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan, as well as areas of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

Having emerged from the rubble of its parent organisation that was largely defeated in 2017 – 2018, it has undergone a transformation into one of the world’s most fearsome terrorist movements.

ISIS-K grabbed global attention with a 2021 suicide bombing on Kabul international airport during the U.S. military withdrawal that killed 13 U.S. soldiers and scores of civilians. 

Then in September 2022 it claimed responsibility for a deadly suicide attack at the Russian embassy in Kabul.

But perhaps its most brazen operation prior to the slaughter of 143 concertgoers in Moscow came in January, with a double suicide bombing in Iran that killed nearly 100 people at a memorial for Revolutionary Guard commander, Qassem Soleimani – the deadliest militant attack on Iranian soil since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Along with Al-Qaeda and a smattering of other smaller extremist movements, ISIS-K maintains a presence in Afghanistan under the Taliban, which despite being opposed to ISIS-K lacks the military strength and resources to eliminate its safe havens. 

But unlike its competitors, ISIS-K is capable of operations far from its bases in the borderlands of Afghanistan.

It has aggressively recruited in neighbouring regions, particularly in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, to establish a regional network of jihadist fighter cells that could help execute international attacks, according to a January 2024 UN report.