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Russian police have arrested 60 people after an anti-Semitic mob stormed an airport in the southern Russian republic of Dagestan on Sunday. The Kremlin blamed “external interference” from the West.
Law enforcement authorities in Dagestan, a predominantly Muslim region in the North Caucasus, said Monday they had identified 150 of the rioters who broke into the airport in search of passengers arriving on a flight from Tel Aviv.
The riot, in which angry crowds waving Palestinian flags surrounded the plane and some climbed onto its wings and roof, followed rumors that refugees from the Israeli-Hamas conflict were being resettled in the region.
According to the Russian Interior Ministry, 20 people were injured in the unrest, including police officers and civilians. Two of them are in critical condition.
Sergei Melikhov, the governor of Dagestan, blamed the violence on “our enemies,” including Kiev, and said it was “a stab in the back for our soldiers who defend all our lands in Ukraine.”
Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, said it was “obvious” that the uprising that took place in Dagestan’s capital, Makhachkala, was “largely the result of external interference.”
Putin will hold an extraordinary meeting with his top officials later on Monday to discuss “attempts by the West to use events in the Middle East to divide Russian society,” Peskov told reporters on Monday.
He said the unrest occurred against the backdrop of television images that “showed the horrors of what is happening in Gaza,” adding: “It is very easy for our ill-wishers to use these images to exploit the situation To provoke and upset people.”
The unrest comes as tensions over Israel’s war with Hamas, sparked by a deadly Oct. 7 attack by the militant group that Israeli officials said killed more than 1,400 people, threaten to spill over into the region .
Israel responded to the Hamas attack by bombing the Gaza Strip and launching a ground offensive in the enclave, killing more than 8,000 people and wounding more than 20,000 so far, according to Palestinian officials.
There have been several protests in support of Palestinians in cities across the Caucasus in recent days, despite strict rules banning public demonstrations in Russia.
Russia, which has traditionally sought neutrality in Israeli-Palestinian relations, has called for a ceasefire in Gaza and offered tacit support to Palestinian forces.
Last week, the Kremlin hosted members of the Hamas leadership in Russia for talks including on the Gaza-based group’s hostage-taking of Russian citizens, while Putin did not condemn Hamas’s attack on Israel at a meeting with religious leaders last week.
A member of Dagestan’s Chief Rabbinate said Sunday that there were between 300 and 400 Jewish families in Derbent, a major city in Dagestan, and about as many scattered throughout the region.
“The situation in Dagestan is very difficult, the community is very afraid,” Rabbi Ovadya Isakov was quoted as saying in an interview with Podyom, a small Russian online media outlet. “Russia is not a panacea; there were pogroms in Russia too. It is not clear where to flee to.”
Videos shared on social media showed dozens of men on the runway in Makhachkala on Sunday. Some insulted an airport employee who insisted there were no more passengers on the plane.
According to local media reports, crowds also overran a hotel in Dagestan on Saturday evening looking for Israelis. Kommersant reported that a Jewish center under construction in Nalchik, the capital of the nearby Russian republic of Kabardino-Balkaria, was also set on fire.
“The State of Israel views attempts to harm Israeli citizens and Jews everywhere as serious,” the Israeli prime minister’s office said, adding that its government is closely following developments in Dagestan.
“Israel expects Russian law enforcement authorities to protect the well-being of all Israeli citizens and Jews and to take decisive action against rioters and wild incitement against Jews and Israelis,” it said.
Some of the rumors appear to have been fueled by a Telegram channel called Morning Dagestan, which has more than 50,000 readers.
The channel is linked to Ilya Ponomarev, a Kiev-based former Russian politician who opposes the Kremlin and claims to coordinate a far-right group of Russians fighting Moscow in Ukraine. Ponomarev said on Sunday that he had not controlled the channel for more than a year.