Five women were shot dead in an apparent radical Islamist attack on an Orthodox church in the North Caucasus region of Dagestan today, officials and local<\/p>\n
media said.<\/p>\n
According to local press reports an unidentified gunman fired at worshippers at an Orthodox church in the town of Kizlyar in the mainly Muslim region.<\/p>\n
“An unknown man opened fire with a hunting rifle in Kizlyar, fatally wounding four women,” the regional internal affairs ministry said in a statement.<\/p>\n
A fifth woman died of her injuries in hospital, health ministry spokeswoman Zalina Mourtazalieva told TASS news agency.<\/p>\n
Two Russian police officers were injured in the attack.<\/p>\n
The attacker was “eliminated” by police fire, the regional internal affairs ministry added.<\/p>\n
According to a local official, the assailant was a local man in his early twenties, the Interfax news agency reported.<\/p>\n
The Russian RBK daily quoted an Orthodox priest saying the attacker had opened fire on churchgoers following an afternoon service.<\/p>\n
“We had finished the mass and were beginning to leave the church. A bearded man ran towards the church shouting Allahu Akbar and killed four people,” Father<\/p>\n
Pavel told RBK.<\/p>\n
“He was carrying a rifle and a knife,” he added.<\/p>\n
Dagestan, bordering Chechnya, is one of the poorest and most unstable regions of Russia.<\/p>\n
Islamist rebels from the region, which lies immediately east of Chechnya, are known to have travelled to Syria to join the Islamic State group.<\/p>\n
In 2015, IS declared it had established a “franchise” in the North Caucasus.<\/p>\n
It has claimed a number of attacks on police in Dagestan in the last couple of years that have involved guns and explosives, as local security forces battle a<\/p>\n
simmering Islamist insurgency.<\/p>\n
Today’s shooting comes exactly one month before the March 18 presidential election that Vladimir Putin is almost guaranteed to win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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