In this photo taken from video released by The Telegram Channel of the head of Dagestan Republic of Russia on June 24, 2024, a view of the damaged the Kele-Numaz synagogue in Derbent after a counter-terrorist operation in republic of Dagestan, Russia.
| Photo Credit: AP

Islamic authorities in Russia’s mostly-Muslim North Caucasus region of Dagestan on July 3 temporarily banned women from wearing the niqab full-face veil, after simultaneous attacks targeting churches and synagogues killed 22 last month.

In a statement posted on the Telegram messenger app, the Dagestan Muftiate said it was introducing a “temporary” ban on the niqab after an appeal from Russia’s ministry of nationality policy and religious affairs.

Reports following the attacks on June 23 said one of the gunmen had planned to escape wearing a niqab.

The muftiate, a religious organisation representing Dagestani Muslims, said that the ban would remain in place “until the identified threats are eliminated and a new theological conclusion is reached”.

The niqab, a style of veil that covers most of the face and body, originated on the Arabian Peninsula and gained some popularity in Dagestan amid an Islamic revival in the region that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Though only a small minority of Dagestani women wear full-face veils, niqabs have been a common sight in the region’s larger cities.

Similar veils are banned by law in several European and post-Soviet countries.

Twenty-two people were killed in a simultaneous attacks on Orthodox churches, synagogues, and police checkpoints across Dagestan on June 23. Security forces said they killed five attackers in gun battles that left a synagogue in the city of Derbent gutted by flames.

Dagestan was in the 2000s and 2010s plagued by an Islamist insurgency that spilled over from neighbouring Chechnya, though security in the region had improved in recent years.

In October, an anti-Israeli mob stormed the airport in the Dagestani capital Makhachkala hunting for Israeli citizens and Jewish people arriving on a flight from Tel Aviv.

Five months later, 145 people were killed in a March attack on a Moscow concert hall that was claimed by ISIS’s Central Asian affiliate. Russian authorities detained several Tajikistani nationals it said had staged the gun and bomb attack.

At least 15 people, including policemen and a priest, were killed and several others injured after unidentified gunmen opened fire at synagogues, churches, and a police post in Russia’s North Caucasus region of Dagestan on Sunday, the region’s governor said.

The simultaneous attacks occurred in Dagestan’s largest city of Makhachkala and in the coastal city of Derbent with Governor Sergei Melikov calling it a “terrorist attack”.

Officials said that the police personnel had killed four gunmen in Makhachkala and two in Derbent.

Melikov said that among the dead, in addition to the police officers, were several civilians, including an Orthodox priest who had worked in Derbent for more than 40 years.

“This evening in Derbent and Makhachkala unknown (attackers) made attempts to destabilise the situation in society,” Melikov wrote on Telegram.

“We know who is behind these terrorist attacks and what objective they are pursuing,” he added later, without specifying but referring to the Russia-Ukraine war.

“We must understand that war comes to our homes too. We felt it, but today we face it,” he said.

Melikov said the “active phase” of operations in Derbent and Makhachkala had ended and that “six bandits have been liquidated”.

The authorities will try to find “all the members of these sleeper cells who prepared (the attacks) and who were prepared, including abroad”, he added.

He also said that June 24-26 have been declared days of mourning in Dagestan, with flags lowered to half-staff and all entertainment events cancelled.

Russia’s Investigative Committee said it had opened criminal probes over “acts of terror” in Dagestan. There, however, was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks.

Russia’s state media cited law enforcement as saying that among the attackers had been two sons of the head of central Dagestan’s Sergokala district, who had been detained.

In Derbent, authorities were quoted as saying that both the synagogue and church were set on fire.

The incident 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.