Terror Attacks Against Church, Synagogue in Russia’s Dagestan

Suspected religious extremism again turned violent in Russia’s volatile North Caucasus region of Dagestan on Sunday with terrorists shooting up a Jewish synagogue, a Russian Orthodox Church and a police outpost in two municipalities, with Reuters citing media in that country of at least six police officers killed and 12 injured.

As Reuters reminded, the twin terror attack comes three months after 145 people were gunned down in an attack claimed by the Islamic State at a Moscow concert hall.

State-controlled TASS news agency circulated a report quoting Russian law enforcement as saying that among the attackers were two sons of the head of central Dagestan’s Sergokala district. The pair and another two gunmen were reported as death in a shootout at a church in Dagestan’s capital of Makhachkala, where an Orthodox priest was also killed.

The predominately Muslim region of Dagestan neighbors with previously war-torn Chechnya, where insurgencies more than two decades ago were also clothed and justified by Islamist rhetoric.

According to an English-language news site based in Moscow, “…the synagogue caught fire shortly after the attack, according to videos published online… Father Nikolai, a 66-year-old priest at the Orthodox church in Derbent, was killed in a knife attack, said Shamil Khadulaev, the chairman of Dagestan’s Public Monitoring Commission.”