A suicide bomber killed at least seven policemen attending the funeral of a colleague in Russia’s volatile Caucasus region of Ingushetia, hours after masked gunmen opened fire in a mosque in nearby Dagestan province, killing one person.
More than a decade after federal forces toppled a separatist government in a war in Chechnya, Russia is still struggling to contain an Islamic insurgency that has spread to other southern provinces in its mainly Muslim Caucasus mountains region.
Militants fighting to carve an Islamic state from the North Caucasus attack officials and law enforcement personnel almost daily but have also increasingly targeted mainstream Muslim leaders backed by the authorities.
The seven policemen were killed and 11 wounded when a suicide bomber attacked a wake being held today for a fellow officer shot a day earlier in the Malgobek district in the north of Ingushetia, Russian news agencies reported.
Witnesses told Reuters a man wearing camouflage clothing detonated a suicide belt after walking up to the group of officers, who had just arrived at the funeral. A pool of blood lay in the street outside the home in the village of Sagopshi.
A suicide bomber went into the yard of a private home, where police officers had come to offer condolences to their late colleague, and activated a bomb device attached to a belt,” a spokesman for the local investigators, Zurab Geroyev, told the Interfax news agency.
The bombing came hours after two masked gunmen opened fire in a mosque in the nearby Dagestan region, killing one Muslim worshipper and wounding eight who were celebrating the end of the holy month of Ramadan. A man who was injured in the attack said some 50 people were gathered in the mosque at the time.
We were sitting, just finished our prayer and wanted to break our fast,” said Rukhit Samedov, wearing a blood-stained T-shirt and cradling his bandaged hand.
“People just sat down, started eating, and the door opened and there was shooting from automatic guns,” he told Reuters.
They wore masks and some sort of camouflage.”
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