Russia: What we know about the closure of an airport in Dagestan

Europe 1 with AFP / Photo credits: Ina FASSBENDER / AFP 21:25 p.m., October 29, 2023

The airport in Makhachkala, the capital of the Russian republic of Dagestan, was closed on Sunday after a hostile mob broke into the airport and security forces were deployed to the area, the Russian aviation agency said. "Following the intrusion of unknown persons into the traffic area of Makhachkala airport, it was decided to temporarily close the airport to arriving and departing flights," Rossaviatsia said, adding that "law enforcement (were) on site." The situation is under control," the authorities said on Sunday evening.

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Several dozen men burst in

According to media outlets Izvestia and RT, several dozen men burst onto the roof of the airport and onto the tarmac when 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 inside the terminal. One of the videos shows a man standing on one of the wings of a plane operated by the Russian airline Red Wings.

According to the specialized website Flightradar, a flight from Tel Aviv of this company landed at 19 p.m. local time (16:21 GMT) in Makhchkala. According to independent Russian media outlet Sota, it was a transit flight that was due to take off again to Moscow at 19 p.m. (<> GMT). It was not yet clear whether the plane was still on the tarmac and what the situation of its passengers was.

Shouts of "Allahu Akbar" heard

Before entering the terminal, several protesters had also checked the passports of people leaving the airport, according to images circulated on social media. One could be seen holding a sign: "Child killers have no place in Dagestan" and others shouted "Allahu Akbar" in the videos.

The information minister of Chechnya, the neighbouring republic, Akhmed Dudayev, had earlier in the day called on Telegram for calm in the face of rising tensions in the Russian Caucasus, and to avoid "provocations".

Attacks on 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 happening now in Makhachkala is bad. Very, very bad," Margarita Simonian, head of the pro-Kremlin channel RT, said on X (formerly Twitter). Chechnya and Dagestan are two unstable republics of Russia whose population is predominantly Muslim.