News
Multiple knife-wielding inmates at a penal colony in Russia's southern Volgograd Region took several prison employees hostage on Friday before being “neutralized” by Russian National Guard snipers, authorities reported.
“Snipers from the Russian National Guard's special forces in the Volgograd Region neutralized four inmates with precision shots after they took prison staff hostage. All hostages have been safely freed,” the agency stated on its official Telegram channel.
Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) reported that four of its employees were killed in the hostage incident at the IK-19 prison in the town of Surovikino, about 120 kilometers (74.5 miles) west of the regional capital, Volgograd:
“Four criminals took eight prison employees and four convicts hostage at IK-19. The criminals inflicted stab wounds of varying severity on four employees, three of whom died. Four others who resisted [the attackers] were hospitalized, with one later dying in the hospital.
During the special operation to free the hostages, officers from FSIN’s Volgograd Region Department and the Russian National Guard neutralized all four criminals. As a result of the criminals' actions, four convicts were injured. No injuries were reported among [FSIN or National Guard] personnel involved in the operation to free the hostages.”
Russian state news outlet TASS earlier quoted FSIN as saying that, “Several inmates seized staff at a meeting of the colony’s disciplinary committee.”
Photos and videos circulated by the Telegram channels Baza and Mash, both reportedly affiliated with the Russian authorities, showed the inmates carrying knives while walking around IK-19’s courtyard.
An unverified minute-long video [Trigger warning: extreme violence, blood] recorded by the armed prisoners and widely circulated on Telegram showed the bloody bodies of five FSIN officers, with three of them believed to be dead. One of the officers in the video had his throat cut.
Off-camera, the individual filming identified the group as the “mujahideen of the Islamic State” and referred to those killed as “kafirs,” or infidels.
Another video depicted the alleged hostage-takers stating they were avenging the group that carried out the Crocus City Hall terror attack in March. ISIS-K (Islamic State Khorasan Province), an Islamic State regional affiliate active in South-Central Asia, claimed responsibility for the attack, which killed 145 people and injured over 500.
Volgograd Region Governor Andrey Bocharov earlier confirmed that four prison staff were admitted to a local hospital following the attack, but stressed that the uprising at the IK-19 colony, which houses over 1,200 inmates, posed no threat to public safety.
Russia’s Investigative Committee launched a criminal investigation on charges of hostage-taking and the disruption of the work of a prison, adding that “the necessary investigative actions are being undertaken to determine all the circumstances of the incident.” Hostage-taking carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
Vladimir Putin said he had been informed of the hostage situation by the head of the prison service earlier on Friday.
It was the second such incident to have occurred in a southern Russian prison this summer. In June, six prisoners who had sworn allegiance to the Islamic State took two guards hostage at a detention center in the neighboring Rostov Region. Five of the prisoners were killed, and the sixth was later sentenced to 23 years in prison on terrorism charges.