[ad_1]
Russian security services shot dead four inmates on Friday who took hostages at a labor camp, stabbed four prison staff members to death and posted videos online claiming to be Islamic State militants, officials said.
“With four precise shots, snipers from the special forces of the Russian National Guard in the Volgograd region killed four prisoners who were holding prison staff hostage. The hostages have been released,” Russian state news agency RIA Novosti quoted the National Guard as saying.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons said the four attackers had been “eliminated.” The agency said four staff members died of stab wounds and others were being treated in hospitals. A total of eight prison staff members and four inmates were taken hostage, the agency said.
In a video released by the attackers, the victims lay in a pool of blood, one with his throat slit, and one of the prisoners shouted that they were “jihadists” from the Islamic State.
Other videos showed the attackers walking around the prison yard as one of the hostages slumped on the ground with blood on his face.
The hostage rescue operation came after Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a weekly Security Council meeting that he wanted to hear the opinions of the interior minister, the head of security at the Federal Security Service and the head of the National Guard.
Russia’s defense and security agencies are focusing primarily on the war in Ukraine, where attacks by Islamist militants have increased recently.
In June, a bloody prison riot linked to the Islamic State took place in the southern region of Rostov, where special forces shot and killed six prisoners who were taking hostages.
Later that month, gunfire hit a church, a synagogue and a police checkpoint in the mainly Muslim southern Russian region of Dagestan, killing at least 20 people.
In March, the Islamic State claimed responsibility for an attack in which gunmen stormed the Krokassky concert hall near Moscow, spraying audience members with automatic weapons and setting the hall on fire, killing more than 140 people.
This latest incident raises major security concerns, coming just two months after the June prison riot. It is unclear how the men obtained knives to attack prison staff, and how they obtained mobile phones to film themselves and post multiple videos online.
In the video, one of the men appeared to be wearing an improvised explosive vest, while the others were carrying knives and hammers.
Their demands were not clear, but in a rambling monologue they said Russia was “oppressing Muslims around the world” and that their response to the mistreatment of Muslim prisoners was “merciless.”
Russian news media said the four were citizens of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, three of whom were jailed for drug crimes and one for killing in a brawl.
Read more by Euractiv
[ad_2]
Source link
