WARNING: Video contains violent content; discretion is advised. Armed militants have attacked two Orthodox churches and a synagogue, and have opened fire on police in the southern Russia n region of Dagestan . Six police officers were killed, as well as one priest, and 12 injured on Sunday, according to the Russia n local interior ministry. At least one church was set on fire. There were attacks in at least two cities, that appear to have been co-ordinated.
The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War argued that the Islamic State group’s North Caucasus branch, Vilayat Kavkaz, likely was behind the attack, describing it as “complex and coordinated.”Dagestan Gov. Sergei Melikov blamed members of Islamic “sleeper cells” directed from abroad, but didn’t give any other details.
Among the dead was the Rev. Nikolai Kotelnikov, a 66-year-old Russian Orthodox priest at 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 attack came as the Orthodox faithful celebrated Pentecost, also known as Trinity Sunday.
In the early 2000s, Dagestan saw near-daily attacks on police and other authorities that was blamed on militant extremists. After the emergence of the Islamic State group, many residents of the region joined it in Syria and Iraq.The violence in Dagestan has abated in recent years, but in a sign that extremist sentiments still run high in the region, mobs rioted at an airport there in October, targeting a flight from Israel.
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