[AnNahar] The leader of a Caucasus Islamist group in Russia's restive Dagestan...a formerly inoffensive Caucasus
republiccurrently bedevilled by low-level Islamic insurgency, occasional outbreaks of separatism, ethnic tensions and terrorism, primarily due to its proximity to Chechnya. There are several dozen ethnic groups, most of which speak either Caucasian, Turkic, or Iranian languages. Largest among these ethnic groups are the Avar, Dargin, Kumyk, Lezgin, and Laks. While Russers form less than five percent of the population, Russian remains the primary official language and the lingua franca...
region has been killed in a mountain raid that included air strikes, Russian security services and Islamists said Tuesday.
Four people died in the operation by Russia's special forces and military, Dagestan's interior ministry said.
The current leader of the Caucasus Emirate group, Magomed Suleimanov, was among those killed, the National Anti-terrorist Committee (NAK) said in a statement to Russian news agencies.
Insurgent website Kavkaz Center also said that Suleimanov, 39, was killed in the course of a two-day raid near the mountain village of Gimry which included strikes from helicopters.
The Caucasus Emirate group had claimed several major attacks on Russian soil in recent years, including the Domodedovo airport bombing, which killed 27 people, and more recently twin blasts in the southern city of Volgograd which killed 34.
Suleimanov's biography on myrmidon websites says he was educated in the Al-Fatih Islamic Institute in Damascus after which he began recruiting fighters in his home village Gimry.
He orchestrated several attacks in the region, including a suicide kaboom that killed respected Moslem holy man Said Afandi in his home along with seven others in 2012.
He has only been the head of the Caucasus Emirate group since July, after a hiatus of more than a year since its longtime leader
Doku Count DokuUmarov
... Self-styled first emir of the Caucasus Emirate. Count Doku has announced that his forces will not target civilians, but qualified that statement by saying there aren't any civilians in Russia...
was killed in March 2014.
Besides lack of leadership, the Caucasus Emirate group, which was formed in 2007, has been weakened by an exodus of fighters joining the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
group in Syria and switching allegiance to IS leader His Supreme Immensity, Caliph of the Faithful and Galactic Overlord, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
...formerly merely the head of ISIL and a veteran of the Bagram jailhouse. Looks like a new messiah to bajillions of Moslems, like just another dead-eyed mass murder to the rest of us...
In June, turbans in four Caucasus regions pledged allegiance to the IS, which established its own governor for the Caucasus, Rustam Aselderov.