The airport in Dagestan was attacked by anti-Israel mobs for several hours

Dozens of men stormed Makhachkala Airport, the capital of the Russian republic of Dagestan, this Sunday evening, October 29, for several hours when a flight from Israel was announced to be arriving.

Dozens of people besieged the tarmac and terminal of Makhachkala Airport for several hours this Sunday, October 29 evening, when a flight from Israel was announced to have arrived. , the capital of the Russian Muslim republic of Dagestan, was searching for the plane. Travelers.

After police intervention, Russian Airlines announced at 10:20 p.m. (7:20 p.m. French time), that the airport had been “vacated by citizens who entered without authorization.”

Dagestan’s authorities called on the rioters to “stop their illegal actions”, while assessing in a telegram that “it is not easy for each of us to watch the inhuman slaughter of the Palestinian people”.

Israel, for its part, called on Russia to “protect all Israeli citizens and all Jews.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office stressed in a statement that “Israel views with seriousness any attempts to attack Israeli citizens and Jews around the world.”

Looking for Israeli citizens

According to specialist site Flightradar, the Red Wings flight from Tel Aviv landed in Magachala at 7pm local time (4pm French time). According to independent Russian media outlet Sota, it was a transport plane that was scheduled to depart back to Moscow at 9pm (7pm in France).

It is not known whether the plane is still on the tarmac or the condition of its passengers. The airport is closed until November 6, Russian Airlines said.

According to the independent Russian media outlet Sota, after the flight’s arrival from Israel was announced, men first gathered in front of the airport to check the passports of people leaving in search of Israeli citizens.

According to Russian newspaper Izvestia and pro-Kremlin channel RT, they exploded on the airport’s roof and tarmac.

Videos broadcast on Telegram, whose authenticity could not be immediately verified by the AFP, show protesters breaking through barriers, trying to control cars exiting the airport or forcing doors into the terminal.

One video shows a man strapped to the wing of a Russian Red Wings plane. In another, one of the men is seen holding a sign reading “No place in Dagestan for child killers” while others shout “Allah Akbar”. Some in the crowd waved Palestinian flags.

A call from neighboring Chechnya to avoid “provocations”.

“What’s happening now in Makhachkala is bad. Very, very bad,” RT boss Margarita Simonian commented on X (ex-Twitter).

Akhmat Dudayev, information minister of neighboring Chechnya, had earlier in a telegram called for calm and to avoid “provocations” in the face of rising tensions in the Russian Caucasus.

Attacks on Jews “play into the hands of our adversaries who deliberately provoke the world in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” he said in a video.

Chechnya and Dagestan are two unstable republics in Russia whose populations are predominantly Muslim.