Oct. 30 (UPI) — At least nine police officers were injured and 60 people arrested after mass anti-Israel riots at the international airport in Russia‘s mainly Muslim republic of Dagestan, 1,200 miles southeast of Moscow.
Several hundred protestors stormed the airport terminal in the capital, Makhachkala, and spilled out onto the airfield ahead of the arrival of a scheduled flight from Tel Aviv on Sunday evening, according to the state-run Tass news agency.
Authorities brought the situation under control and ejected the rioters but the unrest caused the cancellation of dozens of flights before the airport was shut down Monday morning with no flight departures or arrivals now expected until Tuesday.
“At present, the airport is fully under the control of law enforcement bodies. More than 150 active participants of the riots have been identified, 60 of them have been detained and taken to local police departments for further investigation,” the statement said.
Five people, of whom four are police officers, remain hospitalized after the protest which was not authorized.
“The condition of two police officers is assessed as serious, the others are in a fair condition,” according to the Dagestan Health Ministry.
Video posted on social media showed hundreds of people surging through the airport, some waving Palestinian flags, apparently hunting Israelis from the Red Wings flight which landed shortly after 7 p.m. local time.
Protestors shouted anti-Semitic chants, while some yelled “God is Great” and some broke through security doors and barriers to the air side, invading the runway and encircling aircraft.
Some demonstrators stopped vehicles outside the terminal and forced occupants to show their passports as they combed the area for Israelis.
Israel said the Prime Minister’s Office, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Security Council were “monitoring the development of events” in Dagestan.
“Israel expects the Russian legal authorities to safeguard the well-being of all Israeli citizens and Jews wherever they are and to take strong action against the rioters and the wild incitement being directed against Jews and Israelis,” the Foreign Ministry said in a news release.
Russia’s Human Rights Commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova said the attack was a clear attempt to incite “ethnic hatred” that risked gross violations of human rights.
“The goal is to destabilize civil peace in Russia. In this difficult time, I urge the citizens of Dagestan not to succumb to provocations and strictly follow the law and the calls of the authorities of the Republic,” she wrote on social media.
Moskalkova also referenced a recent meeting between President Vladimir Putin and representatives of religious faiths in Russia in which he stressed that the “interethnic and interreligious harmony” was the basis of Russian statehood.
The United States strongly condemned what it called the “anti-Semitic protests.”
“The U.S. unequivocally stands with the entire Jewish community as we witness a worldwide surge in anti-Semitism. There is never any excuse or justification for anti-Semitism,” National Security spokesperson Adrienne Watson wrote in a post on X.
