Car boom kills Russian Muslim cleric
A senior Muslim cleric and his brother were killed when their car was blown up overnight in the southern Russian province of Dagestan, the regions top prosecutor said on Friday.
Chief prosecutor Igor Tkachev told reporters at the scene in the regional capital Makhachkala that the deputy mufti of the Muslim religious leadership, Kurbanmagomed Ramazanov, and his brother Abdulla had been killed.
A third person in the car was injured by the blast, which was caused by a bomb attached to the vehicle, the prosecutors office said in a statement. Dagestan is a restive Muslim province on Russias Caspian Sea shoreline. On its western side it neighbours the war-torn Chechnya.
While it is frequently the scene of attacks by Islamic militants, law-enforcement authorities did not say who they considered responsible for Thursdays attack. But the head of the Coordinating Centre of Muslims in the North Caucasus, Magomed Albogachiyev, said the attack was part of a systematic push to kill law-enforcement officials and religious leaders to destabilise the region. It is to someones advantage to destabilise the situation. They dont want stability and peace in the Caucasus, RIA Novosti news agency quoted him as saying on Friday.
Posted by: Fred 2007-07-28 |