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Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday that Israel's recommendation that its citizens leave Russia's North Caucasus region after a violent anti-Israeli protest in Dagestan on Sunday was "anti-Russian". In a briefing with reporters, Zakharova said that an Israeli warning against travel in the mostly Muslim regions of the North Caucasus bore "no relation to reality". -snip- Russia has repeatedly criticised Israel's military actions around the Gaza Strip, restated its long-standing support for a Palestinian state, while also hosting a Hamas delegation in Moscow.

Rather than the January 24th suicide bombing at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport (that claimed 36 lives and wounded almost 200) giving rise to a soul searching by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, it has sadly given rise to hypocrisy on his part. Moscow’s investigation into the attack is still ongoing. But earlier this month, in a very chilling video, Doku Umarov—the self-styled emir of the Causasus Emirate—claimed responsibility for it.Threatening further attacks, Umarov said, "With Allah's grace, we will make this year for you a year of blood and tears."

(CNSNews.com) – Although no group has claimed responsibility for Monday’s deadly bomb blasts at the Boston Marathon, a leading al-Qaeda ideologue last year recommended that jihadists in America include sporting events in their list of prospective terror targets.

SNIPPET: "Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics security will be beefed up following Boston Marathon explosions, officials say Russian sports officials said they will beef up security at forthcoming sports events and the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games in the wake of deadly explosions at Boston's marathon that killed three people, and injured over 140 others." "Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics security will be beefed up following Boston Marathon explosions, officials say" SNIPPET: "The World Athletics Championship takes place in Moscow on Aug 10-18, and the event is seen as a dress rehearsal for the 2014 Winter Games in the Black Sea resort...

A website prominently used by Russia’s North Caucasus rebels on Sunday denied any connection to the Boston Marathon bombings that have been blamed on two ethnic-Chechen suspects. “The command of the Vilayat Dagestan mujaheddin… declares that the Caucasus fighters are not waging any military activities against the United States of America. We are only fighting Russia,” the Kavkacenter.com website said in an official statement. The main suspects in the Boston bombings were Tsarnaev brothers, and police is still investigation any possible connections with known rebel and terrorist groups. Police and FBI are still conducting an investigation if the brothers acted...

Flanked by almost 20 men with rifles, Omar Abu al-Chechen kneels on a carpet and delivers a rousing speech urging fellow Muslims to support the 'jihad' against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Dressed almost entirely in black, the militant from Russia's Chechnya region declares an Islamist state is within reach. Fellow fighters from the brigade of foreign militants he leads translate his Russian words into Arabic. "Jihad needs very many things. Firstly it needs money. Much is dependent on money today for jihad," said al-Chechen, his nomme de guerre, the leader of what rebels and websites call the Brigade of Migrants,...

SNIPPET: "The attack took place at a hippodrome in the city of Nalchik, capital of Russia's North Caucasus region of Kabardino-Balkaria." SNIPPET: "A law enforcement source told the RIA Novosti news agency the explosive was a time bomb, equivalent to about 5 kg of TNT. The ministry officials said the attack was aimed at civilians and was designed to hit as many people as possible." Posted by Robert on May 1, 2010 5:21 PM

The tenets of Islamic radicalism, often associated with Wahhabism, a fundamentalist form of Islam prevalent in Saudi Arabia, are slowly penetrating the previously secular populations in the Balkans and the North Caucasus. In Turkey, where 99 percent of the population identify themselves as Muslim, the unique sense of secularism is also beginning to disintegrate in the face of the resurgence of violence from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and rising national discontent, as illuminated by the most recent terrorist attacks in Marmaris, Antalya, and Istanbul. The suppression of any kind of religion during the Soviet communist regime, the forced amalgamation...

On July 8, insurgents in the North Caucasus region of Dagestan simultaneously attacked two senior local officials. Early in the morning a roadside bomb killed Bitar Bitarov, prosecutor for the town of Buinaksk, as he was driven to his office. After the blast, Bitarov’s car was also attacked by gunfire, and two of his bodyguards were also injured (Regnum.ru, July 8). Adilgirei Magomedtagirov, the Dagestani interior minister, immediately rushed to the scene, as is his habit whenever a rebel attack occurs in the region. It usually takes 30 minutes to drive from Makhachkala, the Dagestan capital, to Buinaksk, but since...

Osama bin Laden was far from the first jihadist to kill infidels as an expression of religious piety. This years marks the 600th anniversary of the death of Tamerlane (Timur Lang; “Timur the Lame”, d. 1405), or Amir Timur (“Timur” signifies “Iron” in Turkish). Osama lacks both Tamerlane’s sophisticated (for his time) military forces and his brilliance as a strategist. But both are or were pious Muslims who paid homage to religious leaders, and both had the goal of making jihad a global force. Santayana was correct when he told us that those who refuse to learn from history are...

The Sufi branch of Islam has enjoyed spectacularly good press in the West. Hailed as peaceful mystics who believe jihad is a spiritual quest, nothing violent or unpleasant, Sufism has attracted favorable attention and converts from all sorts of Westerners, from new agers in Marin County, California, to East Coast intellectuals. But Sufis are not necessarily all peace-loving meditative seekers of the divine. The formation of the “The Sufi Jihadi Squadrons of Shaykh ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Gilani” in Iraq was recently announced at the jihadist website, “Jihad Unspun”. The Al-Gilani (d.1166) after whom they are named was in fact a Hanbali...

Tensions between Tbilisi and Moscow rose further this week with the latter saying it would indefinitely stop issuing entry visas for Georgian nationals and requesting that Prime Minister Zurab Noghaideli postpone a planned working visit to Russia. The new escalation comes days after Georgian lawmakers called for a review of the 1992 peace agreement that put an end to the war with South Ossetia and voted Russian peacekeepers out of the separatist republic.

Heavy fighting erupted yesterday between security forces and alleged Islamic militants in Russia's southern region of Stavropol. The clashes erupted in Stavropol Krai's eastern Neftekum Raion, an area that had not been touched recently by unrest despite its proximity to Chechnya and Daghestan. PRAGUE, 10 February 2006 (RFE/RL) -- The fighting has been taking place in Tukui-Mekteb, a small settlement located west of Daghestan and north of Chechnya. Up to 300 Interior Ministry troops and special police officers have been battling alleged Islamic militants entrenched in several village houses. Security forces have destroyed at least two of the buildings with...

Tensions between Tbilisi and Moscow heightened today with Georgia threatening to deport three Russian peacekeepers arrested overnight in its separatist republic of South Ossetia. Officials in Moscow blame Tbilisi for allegedly exacerbating the situation in the conflict zone as Georgian lawmakers keep pressing for all Russian troops stationed in South Ossetia to be withdrawn.

MOSCOW, April 29 (RIA Novosti) - Islam Abdulatipov, 37, a leader of a Dagestan criminal group, which financed terrorists in the North Caucasus was arrested by Moscow's anti-terrorist police, spokesman for the Russian Interior Ministry Oleg Yelnikov told journalists. According to him, the arrestee's band is also involved in kidnapping and arms trade. "The money gained from their criminal activities was used to finance North Caucasian terrorists," Oleg Yelnikov said.