Security forces stormed a detention center in southern Russia on Sunday and killed inmates who had taken two staff members hostage, Russia’s state news agency reported on Sunday. RIA Novosti.
The hostages in the pre-trial detention center in Rostov-on-Don were unharmedsaid that agency, citing the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service.
He also reported that the kidnappers were killed.
“During the special operation to release the hostages in the pre-trial detention center number 1 of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia in the Rostov region, the criminals were eliminated, the employees who were held hostage were released and were not injured,” according to a message from the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia.
Previously, the state news agency TASS, citing anonymous law enforcement sources, had said that six kidnappers were in the central courtyard of Detention Center No. 1 of the Rostov region, armed with a knife, a rubber baton and a fire axe. Among the prisoners are men accused of having ties to the Islamic State group, he added.
The hostages, meanwhile, were an operations manager and a supervisor.
According to the media, the six inmates were sentenced to 18 years in prison in December last year for various terrorism crimes, including preparing a bomb attack on the Supreme Court of the Russian republic of Karachaevo-Circassia. The sentence stated that the defendants maintained online contact with a member of the Islamic State and had sworn allegiance to the terrorist organization.
The terrorists have been identified as Shamil Akiev, Tamerlan Gireev and Azamat Tsitskievconvicted of attempting to attack the headquarters of the Supreme Court in the Russian republic of Karachayevo-Cherkessia.
The authorities suspect that This kidnapping was planned for several months and had help from outside the prison.
Russia has repeatedly been the target of attacks claimed by the jihadist organization.
On March 22, gunmen opened fire at a concert hall near Moscow, killing at least 144 people and injuring hundreds. It was the deadliest attack on Russian soil since 2004.
Since then, more than 20 people have been arrested, including the four alleged attackers, all of them from Tajikistan, a former Soviet republic in Central Asia bordering Afghanistan.
The Islamic State repeatedly claimed responsibility, but Moscow tried to link Ukraine and the West to the attackthe worst attack recorded in Russia in twenty years.
“In the course of the investigation (…), it was determined that the preparation, financing, attack and withdrawal of the terrorists were coordinated over the Internet by members of the Khorasan Province group”, the Afghan branch of IS, declared the director of the Russian security services (FSB), Alexander Bortnikovcited by the agency RIA Novosti.
At the end of March, the Russian president Vladimir Putin He acknowledged that the attack was committed by “radical Islamists,” but continued to suggest that kyiv had ordered it.
(With information from agencies)
