At least 15 police officers, an Orthodox priest and three civilians were the victims of yesterday's terrorist attack in Dagestan: 25 injured.

“More than fifteen officers became victims while protecting the peace and tranquility” of the southern Russian Republic, Governor Sergey Melikov said in a video posted on Telegram. The authorities specify that among the civilians killed in the attack there is also "Father Nikolaj, who served for more than forty years in the Orthodox church of Derbent".

Yesterday afternoon a group of armed men opened fire on a synagogue, a church and, immediately afterwards, a traffic police station between Derbent and Makhachkala. After the attack, the terrorists set fire to the two places of worship and escaped in a white Volkswagen Polo. Some were killed, at least six according to local sources.

Throughout the Caucasian Republic, the local National Anti-Terrorism Committee has decided on an exceptional mobilization of law enforcement agencies specialized in anti-terrorism actions: «In order to guarantee people's safety, prevent terrorist crimes and block people involved in armed attacks - we read in the Committee's note - the head of the directorate of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) for Dagestan has decided to impose anti-terrorism operations". The perpetrators of these attacks "are members of an international terrorist organization", a local police source told Tass.

Already last October 28, this Muslim-majority Republic was the scene of an openly anti-Semitic act: at the airport of the capital, Makhatchakala, dozens of people stormed the runway and the terminal after it was announced that a plane had landed coming from Israel , shouting Allah u Akbar, in what seemed to everyone to be a real manhunt, with sinister echoes of a pogrom. At the time, Moscow accused the Kiev government of having "a key role" in that action. Moscow Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Ukraine's goal was to "destabilize Russia" by provoking ethno-religious divisions. "Absurd accusations," was Washington's response.

(Unioneonline/D)

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