The airport in Makhachkala, the capital of the Muslim-majority Russian republic of Dagestan, was closed on Sunday, October 29, after the arrival of a flight from Israel was announced. Police officers were on site. Israel called on Russia on Sunday to “protect all Israeli citizens and all Jews.”
Published on: 10/29/2023 – 9:09 p.m. Modified on: 10/29/2023 – 10:17 p.m
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“Following the intrusion of unknown persons into the traffic zone of Makhachkala Airport, it was decided to temporarily close the airport to arriving and departing flights,” Rossaviatsia said, adding that law enforcement officers were on site. According to the Russian agency, Dagestan airport will remain closed until November 6th.
According to Izvestia and RT media, several dozen men stormed onto the roof of the airport and onto the tarmac when the arrival of a flight from Israel was announced.
Videos posted on Telegram show them breaking barriers, trying to control cars leaving the airport or breaking down doors inside the terminal. One of the videos shows a man positioned on one of the wings of a Russian Red Wings aircraft. According to the specialist website Flightradar, a flight of this airline from Tel Aviv landed in Mukhkala at 7:00 p.m. local time (4:00 p.m. UT). According to the independent Russian media Sota, it was a transit flight that was scheduled to take off again towards Moscow at 9:00 p.m. (7:00 p.m. UT).
When entering the airport, passengers will be asked to grant permission to enter Israel based on their travel documents
Arab-Israeli conflict supporting anti-Semitism in the world region. After sending your guests on vacation, you mailed them and mailed them every time until they were in town… pic.twitter.com/hW1XFz40iX
– SOTA (@Sota_Vision) October 29, 2023
Several protesters had also checked the passports of people leaving the airport before entering the terminal, images posted on social media showed. One of them held a sign: “Child murderers have no place in Dagestan.”
With shouts of “Allahu Akbar” we see men breaking through security barriers to allow access to the airport tarmac, our correspondent in Moscow reports. Jean Didier Revoin. Other images show passengers getting off a plane, presumably from Israel, and the same passengers returning to the plane at the crew’s direction, as we see several dozen people rushing towards them on the tarmac.
Dagestan authorities say the situation is under control and anti-riot forces are stationed on site. Images appear to show that some attackers were overpowered. At the same time, local authorities appeal to the population not to commit any illegal acts.
The Council of Spiritual Leadership of Muslims in Russia, for its part, calls on Muslims not to give in to provocative appeals and to preserve the confessional unity of Russia, while this would only be a threat to the head of the separatist republic of North Ossetia as a provocation staged from outside. And the truth is that all of these events remain very vague at the moment, without us really knowing who is behind them.
Earlier in the day, the information minister of the neighboring republic of Chechnya, Akhmed Dudayev, called on Telegram to remain calm and avoid “provocations” in view of the increasing tensions in the Russian Caucasus. Attacks on Jews “will play into the hands of our enemies who are deliberately provoking the world in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” he said in a video.
“What is happening now in Makhachkala is bad. Very, very bad,” commented the head of the pro-Kremlin broadcaster RT, Margarita Simonian, on X (ex-Twitter).
Chechnya and Dagestan are two unstable republics in Russia whose populations are predominantly Muslim.
Israel calls on Russia to “protect” its citizens
“Israel expects the Russian authorities to protect all Israeli citizens and Jews and to take decisive action against the rioters and against incitement to violence against Jews and Israelis,” the office said. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stressed in a statement that Israel “views attempts seriously.” to attack Israeli citizens and Jews around the world.”
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(And with AFP)