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Seven dead in Islamic State church attack in Chechnya

21 May 2018 by OC Media

Archangel Michael Orthodox Church. (Dominik K. Cagara /OC Media)

Seven people have been left dead including four attackers after militants attempted to storm a church in the Chechen capital Grozny. According to Intel­li­gence Group Enter­prise, the Islamic State’s Caucasus Province has claimed respon­si­bil­i­ty for the attack, on the Archangel Michael Orthodox Church, the only Orthodox church in Grozny.

The Islamic State released state­ments claiming respon­si­bil­i­ty for the attack in English and Russian through its mouth­piece Amaq news agency.

Local author­i­ties said that four men armed with knives and guns assaulted the church with the aim of taking con­gre­gants hostage, but that the attack was thwarted by law enforce­ment. After hearing shots and Islamic chants, service attendees managed to shut down doors of the church, pre­vent­ing the assailants from entering the building, Ria Novosti reported. Two police officers were report­ed­ly killed pro­tect­ing the Church in the ensuing shootout, with another two were wounded. One bystander was also left dead. All four attackers were killed.

The Head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov said that he ‘imme­di­ate­ly arrived at the scene’ and ‘per­son­al­ly oversaw the ongoing special operation, which took several minutes’. Social media channels asso­ci­at­ed with Kadyrov doc­u­ment­ed his supposed personal involve­ment.

Before the iden­ti­ties of the armed men assault­ing the church became known, Kadyrov claimed to have ‘infor­ma­tion that attackers have been instruct­ed to carry out assault from a Western country’.

Later that day, officials iden­ti­fied the attackers as three young local men — brothers Amir and Ali Yunusov and Mikhail Elisul­tanov — and Akhmed Tsechoyev, a resident of neigh­bour­ing Ingushetia.

Following their iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, Kadyrov insisted via his Telegram channel that ‘focusing on the Islamic State would mean the inves­ti­ga­tion might lose focus on [the fighters’] real sup­port­ers’.

Kadyrov has relied on messaging app Telegram to deliver his messages since he was included in a US sanctions list and sub­se­quent­ly banned from Instagram, a platform he used exten­sive­ly.

20th attack

According to Caucasian Knot, this was the 20th attack in Chechnya and the third on a religious insti­tu­tion claimed by the Islamic State since 2015. After Islamic State’s major strategic and ter­ri­to­r­i­al losses in Syria and Iraq, Russian author­i­ties have warned Chechnya could face thousands of fighters returning to their homeland. However, according to Uni­ver­si­ty of Birm­ing­ham based doctoral researcher Mark Youngman, recent attacks have not involved ‘returnees’. A 2017 report from CREST, a British security think-tank, said that ‘most planned attacks linked to Syria and Iraq have not involved returnees’, as ‘domestic recruits appear to pose a greater threat’.

The Islamic State’s Caucasus Province replaced the Caucasus Emirate, an insur­gency group linked with al-Qaida aiming to establish an Islamic state inde­pen­dent of Russia, in around 2015. The group operates in the Northeast Caucasus, espe­cial­ly Chechnya. In recent years, thousands of fighters from the North Caucasus have vol­un­teered to fight in the Syrian civil war, many for the Islamic State.

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Filed Under: News Stories Tagged With: attack, chechnya, church, grozny, islamic state, orthodox church, russia

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