June 23 (UPI) — A priest and six police officers died in an attack on two Orthodox churches and a synagogue in Russia’s majority Muslim Republic of Dagestan, the national counterterrorism agency and police said Sunday.
The attacks were in the city of Derbent. Also, a police traffic stop in Makhachkala, Dagestan, was hit. The region is in the southernmost tip of Russia, about 2,000 miles south of Moscow, along the Caspian Sea.
Attackers used automatic rifles from three places of worship around 6 p.m. local time before driving away in a white Volkswagen Polo car, officials reported. The synagogue then caught fire.
Father Nikolai, a 66-year-old priest at the Orthodox church, died in a knife attack, Shamil Khadulaev, the chairman of Dagestan’s Public Monitoring Commission, said
Priests locked themselves inside the church and were waiting for help.
A security guard at the Orthodox church in Makhachkala was also killed, Khadulaev said.
In all, another 12 were wounded in the attacks on Derbent and Makhachkala, the spokeswoman for Dagestan’s Interior Ministry, Gayana Gariyeva, told the state-run RIA Novosti news agency.