Antoine Bienvault with AFP / Photo credits: Ina FASSBENDER / AFP
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1:21 p.m., October 30, 2023
The airport in Makhachkala, the capital of the Russian republic of Dagestan, was closed on Sunday after the intrusion of a crowd hostile to Israel and security forces were deployed on the spot, the agency announced Russian aviation. “Following the intrusion of unknown persons into the traffic zone of Makhachkala airport, it was decided to temporarily close the airport to arriving and departing flights,” Rossaviatsia said, adding that “the law enforcement (were) on site. “The situation is under control,” assured the authorities on Sunday evening around 10 p.m.
Several dozen men burst in
According to the Izvestia and RT media, several dozen men burst onto the roof of the airport and onto the tarmac when the arrival of a flight from Israel was announced. Videos posted on Telegram show them breaking down barriers, trying to control cars leaving the airport or breaking down doors within the terminal. One of the videos shows a man posted on one of the wings of a Russian Red Wings plane.
According to the specialized site Flightradar, a flight from Tel Aviv of this company landed at 7 p.m. local time (4 p.m. GMT) in Makhchkala. According to the independent Russian media Sota, it was a transit flight which was due to take off again towards Moscow at 9 p.m. (7 p.m. GMT). It was currently impossible to know whether the plane was still on the tarmac and what the situation of its passengers was.
“60 people arrested”
Before entering the terminal, several demonstrators had also checked the passports of people leaving the airport, according to images posted on social networks. One could be seen holding a sign: “Child killers have no place in Dagestan” and others shouted “Allah Akbar” or waved Palestinian flags in the videos. The Information Minister of Chechnya, the neighboring republic, Akhmed Dudayev, had called earlier in the day on Telegram for calm in the face of rising tensions in the Russian Caucasus, and to avoid “provocations”.
Attacks targeting Jews “will play into the hands of our enemies who deliberately provoke the world in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” he said in a video. “What is currently happening in Makhachkala is bad. Very, very bad,” the head of the pro-Kremlin RT channel, Margarita Simonian, commented on X (ex-Twitter). Chechnya and Dagestan are two unstable republics in Russia whose populations are predominantly Muslim.
The press service of the Russian Interior Ministry said in a statement that “more than 150 active participants have been identified, 60 of them arrested.” It is specified that nine police officers were injured, two are hospitalized.