Gunmen attacked churches and synagogues in Russia’s North Caucasus Dagestan on Sunday, killing at least eight police and National Guard officers and a priest, officials said.
The unidentified gunmen launched simultaneous attacks in Dagestan’s largest city Makhachkala and the coastal city of Derbent.
Russia’s Investigative Committee said it had opened criminal investigations into “acts of terror” in Dagestan, a largely Muslim region of Russia bordering Chechnya.
Russian officials said police had killed four gunmen in Makhachkala and two in Derbent.
“Armed attacks were carried out this evening on two Orthodox churches, a synagogue and a police checkpoint in the cities of Derbent and Makhachkala,” the National Anti-Terrorism Committee said in a statement to RIA Novosti news agency.
“According to preliminary information, a priest of the Russian Orthodox Church and police officers were killed as a result of the terrorist attacks.”
The commission later said the “active” phase of the operation against attackers in Derbent had ended.
A total of six officers were killed and 12 injured in the attacks, Dagestan’s Interior Ministry spokeswoman Gayana Gariyeva told RIA Novosti.
The ministry later added that a local police chief had died from his injuries.
The Russian National Guard, meanwhile, said one of its officers had been killed in Derbent and several others had been injured.
In a separate attack, Dagestan’s Interior Ministry said that in a village 65 kilometers (40 miles) from Makhachkala called Sergokal, armed men shot at a police car, wounding one officer.
A law enforcement source said the Sergokal district head was being questioned about his sons’ possible involvement in the attacks, RIA Novosti reported.
The Russian Orthodox Church said its archpriest Nikolai Kotelnikov was “brutally murdered” in Derbent.
– Synagogues on fire –
Sunday is a religious holiday, Pentecost Sunday, in the Russian Orthodox Church.
Dagestan’s Interior Ministry said 19 people took refuge in a church in Makhachkala and were later found safe.
Gunmen also attacked synagogues in both cities.
“The synagogue in Derbent is on fire,” the chairman of the Public Council of the Russian Federation of Jewish Communities, Boruch Gorin, wrote on Telegram.
“The synagogue in Makhachkala was also set on fire and burned down,” he said.
Makhachkala Rabbi Rami Davidov later told RIA Novosti that no one was killed or injured there.
The Russian Jewish Congress said on its website that the Derbent synagogue was attacked about 40 minutes before evening prayers.
Gunmen shot at police and guards and threw Molotov cocktails inside, the report said, adding that the attack in Makhachkala was similar.
Dagestan’s leader Sergei Melikov wrote on Telegram: “Tonight unknown (attackers) in Derbent and Makhachkala made attempts to destabilize the situation in society.”
State news agency TASS quoted a law enforcement source as saying that the “armed men who carried out attacks in Makhachkala and Derbent are supporters of an international terrorist organization,” without naming them.
Russia’s FSB security service said in April it had arrested four people in Dagestan on suspicion of plotting the deadly attack on Moscow’s Crocus City Hall concert hall in March, which was claimed by the Islamic State group.
Militants are known to have traveled from Dagestan to join IS in Syria, and in 2015 the group declared it had established a “franchise” in the North Caucasus.
Dagestan is located east of Chechnya, where Russian authorities waged two brutal wars against separatists, first in 1994-1996 and then in 1999-2000.
Since the defeat of Chechen rebels, Russian authorities have been engaged in a simmering conflict with Islamist militants from across the North Caucasus, killing dozens of civilians and police officers.
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