IS claims Russia knife attack wounding 7

MOSCOW: The IS group on Saturday claimed responsibility after a man stabbed seven people on the street in a Russian city before being shot dead by police, despite investigators saying it was probably not a terrorist attack.

“The executor of the stabbing operation in the city of Surgut in Russia is a soldier of the IS,” IS propaganda outlet Amaq said in a statement.

Russia’s Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, said a man in Surgut had “carried out attacks on passersby, causing stab wounds”. It said armed police called to the scene “liquidated” the attacker following the stabbing on Saturday morning.

Regional officials said seven people were taken to hospital, with the figure confirmed by investigators, who lowered an earlier toll of eight wounded.

A spokesman for regional police had earlier downplayed the possibility of a terrorist incident, telling Interfax news agency that the theory that the incident was “a terrorist (attack) is not the main one”.

The Investigative Committee said it had established the attacker’s identity, saying he was a local resident born in 1994, and that they were looking into “his possible psychiatric disorders”.

Investigators have opened a criminal probe into attempted murder, not terrorism, with the Investigative Committee’s chief Alexander Bastrykin taking the case under his personal control.

Regional police said officers fired warning shots at the scene before firing at the suspect, who was wearing a balaclava.

YouTube footage shown on Russia’s Ren TV television showed a black-clad man lying on a pedestrian walkway with a policeman kneeling on his back as sirens wail.

Unconfirmed reports from the Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid and other media identified the attacker as 19-year-old Artur Gadzhiyev, saying that his father is known to authorities for involvement in radical religious organisations and comes from the region of Dagestan in the North Caucasus.

Russian television reported that the stabbing victims are aged between 27 and 77 and include two women. State news agency TASS said the city’s largest shopping centre was evacuated after the stabbings, citing its director, and police posted a video of the attack site, showing it to be a busy area with traffic and blocks of flats.