Russia today witnessed its fifth bombing in a little over a week, with a double bomb attack upon a police station in Nazran in the North Caucasian Republic of Ingushetia. This time it was a suicide bomber who struck first followed by a car bomb, the attack closely resembling last week’s bombing of another police station in Kizlyar Dagestan where a car bomb was followed a few minutes later by a suicide attack. Yesterday another blast took place, derailing a freight train in Dagestan but fortunately causing no fatalities. Latest reports suggest that two police officers were killed and another two injured in the Nazran incident.
Dokku Umarov, a Chechen Islamist who wishes to establish an Islamic Emirate in the Northern Caucaus, Krasnodar Krai, Astrakhan and the Volga Region, claimed responsibility for the recent Moscow Metro bombings and warned that there would be many more to come. It is probable that his followers were behind today’s attack. In the immediate period following the fall of the USSR, terrorist attacks upon Russian civilians and infrastructure targets were justified by the perpetrators in the name of Chechen independence, but in recent years this has been supplanted by a drift towards an espousal of Salafist jihadism. Clearly, the Islamists are turning up the heat in Russia, so expect more of the same in the weeks ahead and beyond. Reports on today’s and yesterday’s bombings can be accessed in the videos below.
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