News Desk

At least 15 police officer and a priest were killed by gunmen on Sunday in what appear to be coordinated attacks on multiplacesof worship in Russia’s southernmost Dagestan province , local authorities said.

At least six “militants” were also slain, according to Dagestan Republic leader Sergey Melikov, after attacks on police stations, churches, and synagogues in the nearby cities of Derbent and Makhachkala, which are roughly 120 kilometers (75 miles) away.

Chairman of the Dagestan Public Monitoring Commission Shamil Khadulaev identified the deceased priest as Father Nikolay, who was slain during a shootout on an Orthodox church in Derbent. His throat was cut by them. Khadulaevstated, “He was 66 years old and in very bad health.

The attacks, which occurred three months after ISIS offshoot ISIS-K claimed responsibility for an attack at Moscow’s Crocus City Hall that left over 140 people dead in one of the bloodiest terrorist strikes in Russian history, have not yet been attributed to any group.

According to Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Israel, the small Jewish population of Dagestan is a part of the Mountain Jews who historically lived for millennia in sections of Azerbaijan and what is now Russia’s Caucasus.

It’s still unknown how many victims there were. All posts related to the Muftiyat of the Republic of Dagestan, a centralized Islamic body that had before reported on the casualties, have been removed. Local authorities had earlier stated that there had been at least nine fatalities and twenty-five injuries.

These days, the Muftiyat lists “law enforcement officers, clergy, and ordinary citizens” among the victims, although it gives no exact figure.