This morning three men armed with grenades attacked the building of a local police station in the village of Novoselitskoe in Russia's Stavropol Territory.
Law enforcement officers opened fire on them. As a result, two attackers were killed and a third attacker blew himself up.
There were no casualties among the civilians and law enforcement officers.
It is known that one of the attackers was a local resident, two others were migrants. Their identities are currently being investigated.
The official representative of the Ministry of Interior of Russia, Irina Volk, stressed the prudent actions of the local police. "Thanks to the competent and professional actions of the police we managed to avoid casualties among civilians and the staff during the attackers' attempt to enter the district police department of Stavropol Territory," RIA Novosti cited her as saying.
A counter-terrorism operation regime was introduced in the Novoselitsky District immediately after the incident. According to the order of the head of Stavropol Territory, Vladimir Vladimirov Vladimirov, children and people have been evacuated from schools, kindergartens and hospitals of the village. Safety measures were strengthened in similar institutions across the region.
The police initiated a criminal case on charges of assault on law enforcement officers.
A senior scientist of the RAS Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Ahmet Yarlykapov, in conversation with a correspondent of Vestnik Kavkaza noted that the Daesh terrorist group may be more or less involved in the incident. "The fact is that there are almost no 'normal' activities of the bandit underground in the North Caucasus now, because somewhere at the beginning of 2015 almost everyone had already sworn allegiance to Daesh and became a division of the group, which has been hailed as the ‘Caucasus Emirate', and in general it almost completely engulfed the ‘Caucasus Emirate’, which was affiliated with Al-Qaeda. So I think that it fits into a logical chain of the terrorist attacks, which began at the end of 2015," he said.
According to the expert, "In general, Stavropol Territory isn't a calm region in terms of terrorist activities, it has been since the days of the Chechen War." "It's a pretty vulnerable region with a number attacks. So I would not say that Stavropol Territory is a new area for terrorists," Ahmet Yarlykapov concluded.
The president of the International Association of Veterans of the Alpha Anti-Terrorism Unit, Sergey Goncharov, in his turn, urged not to reach hasty conclusions. "It is necessary that someone to initially take responsibility for this terrorist attack or, as today's events are qualified, assault on law enforcement officers". "In any case, I think that Daesh will announce that it was involved in those terrorist attacks, as it has done for the last time. Recently there were three or four terrorist attacks in a row in Dagestan. And most importantly, they were directed against officers of the Russian Ministry of Interior. And there was an attack on the police officer. Fortunately, the police officers in the Stavropol region were able to counter the terrorist attack and prevent causalities. No one was hurt, thank God," he said.
"I think that, most likely, it was Daesh or its recruits who are operating in Stavropol now. The activity of this group is observed not only in Europe and now they have switched to Russia," the expert suggested.
"We must say frankly that the Stavropol region is adjacent to the North Caucasus, and we can try but the North Caucasus is a serious concern for us. So, in this case I think there is a certain risk, because it's much easier to break into the Stavropol region, than into Moscow or Kaliningrad. So I think that this suggestion will be considered by our special services," Sergey Goncharov concluded.
