Dagestan
A female suicide bomber has killed an Islamic spiritual leader and at least five other people in the Dagestan region in Russia’s North Caucasus, according to a police source.
Said Atsayev, a leading Sufi Muslim cleric in the mostly Muslim region, was killed with five followers and the bomber at his home in the village of Chirkey, the source said.
More than a decade after federal forces toppled a separatist government in a war in Chechnya, Russia is struggling to contain an Islamic insurgency that has spread to neighbouring Dagestan and other Muslim provinces of the North Caucasus.
Militants fighting to carve an Islamic state from the North Caucasus have increasingly targeted mainstream Muslim leaders backed by the authorities. – (Reuters)