Dagestan is trying to come to terms with the attacks that killed 20 people on Sunday, including 15 police officers and a priest. Some attacks that would have been carried out by Islamist militants.
A member of the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS) in Afghanistan would have praised the attack in Dagestansaying that it was carried out by “brothers in the Caucasus who showed that they are still strong.
Dagestan tries to assimilate the attacks that They killed 20 people on Sunday, including 15 police officers and a priest. Attacks carried out by suspected Islamist militants, which also caused dozens of injuries in the Russian cities of Makhachkala and Derbent.
The governor of the Russian region of Dagestan Serguéi Melikovhas visited the Derbent church and synagogue and spoken to priests and members of the local Jewish community affected by the attacks.
Although no one immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks, the governor claims they were carried out by members of Islamist “sleeper cells” directed from outside Russia.
Melikov explained that the attackers aimed to “spread panic and fear” and linked the attacks to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
More than 96 percent of the inhabitants of the Republic of Dagestan are Muslims.
A “complex and coordinated” attack
The five attackers died according to the main Russian state criminal investigation agency and they would have been able to identify them. Three of them would be the sons and nephew of the head of the Sergokali districtwho has also been arrested.
The attack was the deadliest inside Russia since last March, when gunmen They opened fire in a concert hall in Moscow, killing 145 people.
The recent history of Dagestan, a Muslim republic bathed by the Caspian and bordering Georgia and Azerbaijan, is dotted with terrorist actions, some of great magnitude such as the incursion led by the Chechen Shamil Basáyevwhich broke out the second war in Chechnya (1999-2009).
The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War argued that the Islamic State group’s North Caucasus branch, Vilayat Kavkazprobably was behind the attackwhich he described as “complex and coordinated”
