Death toll in attack in Russian Dagestan rises to 21

MOSCOW — The death toll in the attack by Islamic extremists in Russia’s southern Dagestan region has risen to 21 after an injured police officer died in a hospital, officials said on Tuesday.

Sunday’s attack, in which militants attacked Christian and Jewish places of worship and fired at police in the cities of Derbent and Makhachkala in the predominantly Muslim North Caucasus region, was the deadliest in Russia since March, when gunmen opened fire at a concert in a Moscow suburb, killing 145 people.

An offshoot of the terrorist militia “Islamic State” in Afghanistan, which claimed responsibility for the attack in March, praised the attack in Dagestan, saying it was carried out by “brothers in the Caucasus who have shown that they are still strong”.

The Investigative Committee, Russia’s top state criminal agency, said all five attackers were killed.

Mavsum Ragimov, governor of the Derbent region, said on Tuesday that a police sergeant had succumbed to his injuries in a hospital, bringing the total number of victims to 21, 16 of whom were police officers.

Health authorities in Dagestan said on Monday that at least 46 people were injured, including 13 police officers.

Among the dead was Father Nikolai Kotelnikov, a 66-year-old Russian Orthodox priest from a church in Derbent. The attack occurred as Orthodox believers were celebrating Pentecost, also known as Trinity Sunday.

In the early 2000s, there were almost daily attacks on police and other authorities in Dagestan, which were blamed on militant extremists. After the rise of the terrorist group “Islamic State”, many residents of the region joined it in Syria and Iraq.

Violence in Dagestan has subsided in recent years, but one sign that extremist sentiments still exist in the region is the rioting crowd at an airport in October that attacked a flight from Israel. More than 20 people were injured – none of them Israelis – when hundreds of men, some carrying banners with anti-Semitic slogans, stormed the tarmac, chasing passengers and throwing stones at police officers.