members of the Islamic State group “neutralized” after taking two prison guards hostage

The prison administration specifies that the agents were not injured during the special operation.

Several members of the Islamic State jihadist organization were “neutralized” in a Russian prison, according to the authorities, after taking two prison officers hostage, Sunday June 16. “The employees who were taken hostage were released and were not injured”, specified the prison services, in a press release published after a special operation. The prison administration had announced, a few hours earlier, that defendants were holding guards in detention center number 1 in the Rostov region, located at the gateway to the Russian Caucasus.

Members of IS facing trial on charges of “terrorism” were among the hostage-takers, according to the Tass agency, citing a source within the police. They were holed up in the courtyard of the detention center, armed with a pocketknife, a baton and an axe, according to the same source. The attackers, who numbered six according to the Interfax agency, had asked to be provided with a car and to be allowed to leave the detention center in exchange for the release of the hostages.

This hostage taking came almost three months after the attack claimed by ISIS against the Crocus City Hall, a concert hall near Moscow, where armed men killed at least 144 people, the worst attack in almost 20 years. More than 20 people were subsequently arrested, including the four alleged attackers, all from Tajikistan, a former Soviet republic in Central Asia neighboring Afghanistan.

Russia has been repeatedly targeted by attacks claimed by the jihadist organization, although ISIS’s influence remains limited in the country. According to Russian media, the attackers at the Rostov detention center could be men arrested in 2022 and accused of wanting to carry out an attack against the Supreme Court of Karachay-Cherkessia, a Russian republic in the Caucasus with a Muslim majority.

Russia faced an Islamist rebellion in the early 2000s in the Caucasus, a movement born from the first conflict against separatist Chechnya in 1994-96. It was defeated by Russian federal forces and in recent years, armed incidents have become rare there. Nearly 4,500 Russians, particularly from the Caucasus, fought alongside IS in Iraq and Syria, according to official figures. In April, two armed fighters who were members of“an international terrorist organization” had been shot down by Russian forces near Nalchik in the Caucasus.