Sixty arrests after gang chased Israeli passengers in the Russian republic of Dagestan

A crowd stormed the airport on Sunday amid tensions around the world caused by the deadly Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip in retaliation for Hamas’ bloody attack in southern Israel on October 7.

Sixty people were detained at an airport in Makhachkala, the capital of Russia’s Muslim-majority republic of Dagestan. after a break-in while searching for Israeli passengers on a flight from Israel, Russian police said on Monday.

Nine police officers were injured during the airport evacuation, two of whom were hospitalized, a Russian Interior Ministry statement said.

“More than 150 active participants in the riots were identified and 60 were arrested,” the statement from the ministry’s press service said.

“Currently the airport is under law enforcement control,” he added.

Looking for passengers

Videos circulated on social networks and in Russian media showed a group of people driving vehicles that left the site, broke open doors in the terminal and surrounded a plane on the runway.

The Flightradar website indicated that a Red Wings flight from Tel Aviv landed in Makhachkala at 7:00 PM (4:00 PM GMT).

According to the independent Russian media Sota, it was a transit flight that would depart again for Moscow two hours later.

Local authorities did not immediately indicate whether the flight and passengers could continue the journey.

One of the protesters held a sign that read “Child killers have no place in Dagestan,” according to one of the videos.

Dagestan accuses Ukraine

Sergei Melikov, the president of Dagestan, a republic in Russia’s Caucasus, said Monday morning that the riots were organized from Ukrainian territory, amid an armed conflict between Kiev and Moscow.

The Kremlin confirmed on Monday that the anti-Semitic riots that took place last night at the airport of Makhachkala, the capital of Russia’s North Caucasian republic of Dagestan, were “largely the result of foreign interference” and attempts by the West to “divide Russian society” . .”.

“This is largely the result of foreign interference,” Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for the Russian presidency, said at his daily news conference.

Hundreds of people took over Makhachkala Airport and the runway yesterday after calls on Telegram channels to go to the airport in response to the arrival of flights from Israel and to check flights and cars in search of Israelis and Jews in protest against the conflict between Israel and the armed wing of the Islamic group Hamas.

According to Peskov, Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold a meeting this afternoon with senior officials of his government to discuss events in Dagestan and “the West’s attempts to take advantage of the situation in the Middle East to divide Russian society.”

For her part, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova assured that the “Kiev regime” played a “key role” in the events in Dagestan.

“In the implementation of this destructive action, a direct and key role was assigned to the criminal regime in Kiev, which in turn acted through inveterate Russophobes who had settled there (in the North Caucasian republic),” Zakharova said in a news report. conference.

According to the spokesperson, the “speed” with which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky commented on the riots is “direct evidence that this information sabotage” is part of a campaign “coordinated by the Ukrainian special services.”

The head of the Russian republic of Dagestan, Sergei Melikov, previously called on participants in the anti-Semitic riots in Makhachkala to “wash away the shame” of the war in Ukraine and accused Kiev of being behind the protests.

“I am ashamed of yesterday’s events. (…) If any of the participants in the riots want to wash away their shame by joining a volunteer battalion or signing a contract with the army, I will greet them,” Melikov told Russian public television. (JO)