Gunmen who carried out attack on Russian police officers had pledged allegiance to ISIS

A recently released video appears to shows the armed gang that attacked policemen in Grozny, the capital of Russia’s Chechnya republic, pledging allegiance to ISIS.

“At night we were informed that in the Oktyabrsky district (of the city – TASS) a group of armed people attacked a policeman and took his car. The interception plan was launched immediately. Several minutes after it became known that that gang had broken into a house of another police official in another part of the city but did not find him there and disappeared. Sometime after that the policemen who blocked the crossroads in the city managed to stop the car with the gunmen,” Ramzan Kadyrov, head of the republic, told reporters after the attack.

On December 17, when police attempted to stop a car, gunmen knocked down a traffic policeman and opened fire at the police in an attempt to escape.

“The gunmen were neutralized with retaliation fire. Two of them were taken to hospital and four were killed. An investigation group is working on the scene trying to identify the gunmen. It became known that there was also a girl among them,” the head of the republic said.

Kadyrov said that there are no casualties among the police and the wounded traffic policeman had been taken to hospital.  The Russian newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, offered a different account, citing that the Investigative Committee in Chechnya had stated a total of three police officers were killed.  The newspaper claims at least one of the officers was shot dead by the militants.

Kadyrov also claimed the attack took place outside the city but a video released on YouTube clearly shows police firing automatic weapons from a blockaded in Grozny.

The day after the attack, Kadyrov said security forces had tracked down other gunmen on the outskirts of Grozny and killed seven of them -bringing the total to 11.

Shortly after the attack, Russia Today reported that a source had said “There is information that they [the remaining attackers] are part of an Islamic State cell that is banned in Russia.”

The video, purportedly released by ISIS today, confirms the source’s claims as it shows the gunmen putting their hands together to pledge their allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS.

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