Published23. August 2024, 13:43
Russia: Prison hostage crisis ends in bloodbath
Prisoners took prison officers hostage in a Volgograd region jail on Friday, killing three employees and four attackers.
The Russian National Guard announced that it had “neutralized” the hostage-takers.
AFP
At least three prison workers and their four attackers were killed Friday during a hostage-taking at a prison in Russia’s southwestern Volgograd region, authorities said.
Attackers “liquidated”
This hostage-taking lasting several hours, the second in a Russian prison in just over two months, seems, like the previous one, to bear the mark of the jihadist group Islamic State (IS). According to the Federal Prison Service (FSIN), the four attackers took eight prison employees and four other inmates hostage in “penal colony No. 19”. “The criminals inflicted stab wounds of varying severity on four employees,” the FSIN said in a message late this afternoon on Telegram.
The final toll of the victims among the prison staff is not yet clear. Information communicated by the various authorities has alternately reported three or four dead and a variable number of wounded. According to the FSIN, the four attackers were “liquidated” while the four fellow prisoners taken hostage were wounded. Shortly before, the Russian National Guard had announced that it had “neutralized” the hostage-takers thanks to its “special unit snipers”. The prison in question is a “severe regime” establishment, that is to say with strict conditions of detention. It is located in the town of Surovikino, about 120 kilometers west of Volgograd, the regional capital.
Attack claimed by ISIS in video
Videos not authenticated by AFP tend to support the theory of an operation orchestrated by IS sympathizers. A first video broadcast by several Russian media outlets during the hostage-taking shows a room with a floor covered in blood. It shows four men in fatigues, lying down and bloodied, some apparently unconscious, and at least two other men filmed standing by a third individual who speaks in Arabic. Then the latter claims, in Russian, their membership in IS. In this 46-second video, one of the men holds a knife in one hand and, in the other, one of the presumed guards by the neck. Another video shows four presumed attackers, at least two of whom are holding a knife, one of them also displaying what appears to be an IS flag.
In mid-June, several members of the jihadist organization Islamic State were killed after taking two prison officers hostage in a prison in the Rostov region (southwest), neighboring that of Volgograd. Russia has been targeted on multiple occasions by attacks claimed by the jihadist organization, although the influence of IS remains limited in the country.
At the end of March, an attack was claimed by the IS against the Crocus City Hall, a concert hall near Moscow, where gunmen killed 145 people, the worst attack committed in Russia in almost 20 years.
(afp)
