One killed, 11 injured in shooting at Russia’s heritage site

The Nary-Kala fortress in Derbent dates back to the 8th century AD. It houses Russia’s oldest mosque and madrasa, or Islamic religious school.

“As a results of a gun attack 12 individuals have been harm, one among whom died”, the RIA Novosti information company quoted the official as saying.

“At 6.00 p.m. Moscow time (3.00 p.m. GMT) the counter-terrorism regime was introduced in Dagestan’s Suleiman-Stal region, in three villages of the Khiva region (Zaza, Kontsil and Chilikar) as well as in the area near the village of Mekhtikent and the Cheren mountain pass with the aim to locate fugitives”, he said.

Police found 67 cartridges of various caliber bullets at the scene of the attack.

The incident took place in the southeastern Dagestan city of Derbent late Tuesday.

The attack in the ancient city of Derbent targeted a group of residents, two of them serving border guards, who had climbed on to a viewing platform to survey the city by night, Russia’s Interfax news agency reported. “Four people remain in serious condition”, officials said.

At least 118 people were killed there between January and November as a result of the conflict, according to the Caucasian Knot news portal, which monitors militancy in the North Caucasus.

The Daily Mail notes that “gun and bomb attacks are common in Dagestan, a mostly-Muslim internal republic in Russia’s troubled North Caucasus region”, where “Moscow has been fighting Islamist insurgents” since the 1990s.

AFP adds that al-Qaeda’s operation in Syria, the Nusra Front, has also called upon jihadis in the Caucasus to wage attacks in Russian Federation.