A man attacked pedestrians with a knife in the central street of the northern Russian city of Surgut. At least seven people were injured. The Russian authorities killed the man soon after.
The Islamic State said that the man who attacked in the Siberian town of Surgut was one of their soldiers. However, the authorities are looking up the psychiatric information of the assailant, and they still haven’t confirmed that ISIS is responsible for the whole tragedy. They consider that ISIS is just being opportunistic. At the moment, all the wounded people are alive, though some are in a critical condition.
Russian authorities: “the theory that the attack was an act of terrorism is not the main one.”
A spokesman for Russia’s Investigations Committee said that they are investigating the murder. Apparently, a man with a knife just started stabbing people in the central street of Surgut today. The criminal was found and shot dead by the police. The attack left seven wounded and are under medical care. Two of them are in a critical situation. One of the victims was a woman who was stabbed when she was at an ATM.
According to the Russia’s Interior Ministry, the man was in his 20s and was tentatively identified as a Surgut resident. Photos and videos of the event have been going around in the news showing the attacker’s body on the ground. Some sites have reported that there were three masked men involved in the attack. However, authorities said that there was a single attacker and they are searching his psychiatric records.
Moreover, officials claim that the attack might not have been an act of terrorism. They are not sure about the motives of the attacker. One of the witnesses said that the man was walking with a knife and an ax through a department store and he looked intoxicated. He then might have left the store and started stabbing people on the street.
“An unknown man armed with a knife, moving along the central streets of the city, attacked passersby,” was how the Russian police reported the situation.
Surgut is a city in the Khanty-Mansiysk area of Siberia (northern Russia) where there is an important oil industry. It is about 1,300 miles east of Moscow, the capital city. It has a population of more than 350,000.
Was the attacker a soldier of ISIS?
Quickly, ISIS claimed responsibility through the group’s Amaq News Agency, assuring that the attacker in Surgut was one of their soldiers. Russian authorities think that ISIS might just be taking advantage of the situation and they are investigating the attacks as “attempted murder.” Even if ISIS is related to this actions or not, it is undeniable that the wave of terrorism and hate attacks have been expanding all over Europe. Earlier this week, there was a terrorist attack in Barcelona, Spain, which left 14 people dead and almost 100 wounded, and others in Bavaria (Germany) and Turku (southwestern Finland).
Source: The New York Times