[Arutz 7] - The Islamic State terror movement said, in a statement dated January 1st, that it was behind the Tuesday-evening attack in Magas, the capital of Ingushetia in the northern Caucus region, in which a Russian police officer was killed.After two men ran over the officer in a vehicle, they attacked other officers with knives, wounding three of them. Police fire killed one of them while the other was wounded.
| Update from An Nahar at 10:00 p.m. ET, mostly because it isn’t interesting enough to be a separate post for tomorrow in the midst of all that’s going down in Iraq at the moment: |
Miziev was shot dead by police while Imagozhev is in hospital, Ingushetia's government said.
The governor on Tuesday evening lambasted regional police, saying incompetence on New Year's Eve -- a huge Russian holiday -- led to the incident, while negligence resulted in the death as the officer was not wearing protective armour.
Ordering a boost in security measures, he said one of the attackers worked as a guard in the local culture centre.
Investigators launched a probe into an attempt on the life of police officers, making no mention of terrorism as a motive.
North Caucasus has been a hotbed of Islamic extremism after the breakup of the Soviet Union followed by two separatist wars in Chechnya, a region bordering Ingushetia.
Many radical Islamists went to Iraq and Syria in recent years to join IS and other jihadist groups.
The Islamic State group considers North Caucasus as part of its "caliphate" and has claimed several attacks, most recently on police near the presidential palace in Chechnya in June.
Russian authorities frequently do not recognise these attacks as acts of terror.