Snipers kill knife-wielding prisoners claiming to be IS fighters who kidnapped guards at a Russian prison | World News

According to local media reports, Russian snipers killed four armed prisoners who had detained prison guards and pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.

The National Guard said the inmates had been “neutralized” and all hostages released, but the exact number was not disclosed, reports said.

Earlier, the Russian website Mash showed a video of at least two attackers, one of whom called himself a “mujahideen” and said they had taken over the prison.

Four uniformed officers could be seen lying in pools of blood, three of them motionless. Another was sitting upright in a doorway with a knife to his throat.

Other videos showed four men pacing the prison yard where a bloodied prison worker was being held hostage.

One of the prisoners appeared to be carrying an improvised explosive vest, while the others carried knives and hammers.

Before the prisoners were shot, the state news agency Tass reported that four victims had been taken to hospital, two of them in serious condition.

According to unconfirmed reports on the messaging app Telegram, one or two people died.

The violence occurred on Friday in a penal colony, presumably IK-19 in Surovikino, in the southwest Russia.

“During a meeting of a disciplinary commission, convicts took prison staff hostage,” the prison service said in a statement.

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Russian news sites published the names of four suspected attackers and said they were from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, but there is no official confirmation.

President Vladimir Putin was later filmed at a Security Council meeting asking heads of state and government for an assessment of the situation.

The prison in question has space for more than 1,200 male inmates and is classified as a “hard regime” penal colony.

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This year there have been numerous attacks by militant Islamists in Russia.

The worst was in March, when more than 140 people died after Gunmen attacked a concert hall near Moscow and set the building on fire.

Special forces also shot dead six people who were involved in a IS-related prison uprising in June in the southern Rostov region.

At least 20 people were killed in the same month in Shootings in Dagestana predominantly Muslim region also in the south of Russia.