Snipers kill inmates who stabbed prison guards and took others hostage in Russian prison

Russian National Guard snipers on Friday killed four prisoners who stabbed four prison guards and briefly held others hostage while pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group, officials said.

The Federal Prison Service said four inmates took eight prison guards and four other inmates hostage. They stabbed four of the guards, three of whom died at the scene and the fourth later died at the hospital. The agency said three other guards were hospitalized with injuries.

The Russian National Guard said its snipers had “neutralized” all four attackers and freed all hostages, while the Russian prison service also claimed responsibility for killing the attackers. The discrepancy could not be immediately explained.

Few details are available about the violence at the IK-19 penal colony in Surovkino in the Volgograd region, 860 kilometers southeast of Moscow. It is also unclear how the prisoners took hostages several hours earlier.

As the incident occurred, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the “situation” would be discussed at a regular meeting of the country's Security Council.

Videos purporting to be from the crime scene and circulating in Russian media and messaging app channels showed men with knives in the prison and prison yard, as well as several men in what appeared to be guard uniforms lying on the ground covered in blood.

In the videos, the alleged attackers expressed their support for the terrorist militia “Islamic State” and for the suspects who were arrested in the terrorist attack in March. Attack on a Moscow concert hall 145 people were killed. An IS offshoot claimed responsibility for the attack, in which gunmen killed guests waiting for a popular music group to perform and set fire to the building.

At the time, a US official told CBS News that the US had provided Russia with information about a possible attack as part of its duty to warn.

The state news agency Tass said court documents showed that the hostage-takers were from Central Asian countries of the former Soviet Union; all suspects in the attack on the concert hall were from Tajikistan.

Volgograd Region Governor Andrey Bocharov alluded to social media reports that the attackers were not Russian citizens, but did not confirm their identities.

“Everyone on our territory is obliged to respect and obey the laws of Russia. We will not allow anyone to foment ethnic discord,” he said in a statement released by the regional administration.

An Islamic association – the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of the Russian Federation – said it “categorically rejects” the atrocity and claimed it was “inspired from outside Russia”.

This is the second incident in which prisoners with obvious links to IS have taken hostages. A similar siege of a prison in the southern Rostov region took place in June.

Russian special forces subsequently killed most of the hostage-takers, arrested one and released the guards.

ISIS has repeatedly said it will attack Russia because of its support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is waging a military campaign to crush the group in the Middle East.

AFP contributed to this report.