[Source: Reuters]

Gunmen opened fire at a synagogue, an Orthodox church and a police post in simultaneous attacks across two cities in Russia’s North Caucasus region of Dagestan on Sunday, killing at least six policemen and injuring 12, Russian news agencies quoted the interior ministry as saying.

The attack comes three months after 145 people were killed in an attack claimed by the Islamic State on a concert hall near Moscow, Russia’s worst terrorist attack in years.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks in the volatile North Caucasus region. State news agency TASS cited law enforcement as saying that among the attackers had been two sons of the head of central Dagestan’s Sergokala district, who it said had been detained by investigators as a result.

A local religious organisation in mainly Muslim Dagestan put the death toll at nine, including seven police officers.

The Interior ministry, quoted by Russian news agencies, said four gunmen had been shot dead as the incidents unfolded. A local official said another had been killed during a shootout at a church in Dagestan’s capital of Makhachkala, where an Orthodox priest was also killed.

Restive Dagestan was in the 2000s hit by an Islamist insurgency spilling over from neighbouring Chechnya, with Russian security forces moving aggressively to combat extremists in the region.

In recent years, attacks had become rarer, with Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) saying it in 2017 that it had defeated the insurgency in the region.

The agencies reported exchanges of gunfire in the centre of Makhachkala. They cited the interior ministry as saying that exits from the Caspian Sea port of around 600,000 had been closed, and that conspirators who were still at large may yet attempt to flee the city.