MOSCOW: Daesh jihadist group on Saturday claimed responsibility after a man stabbed seven people on the street in a Russian city before being shot dead by police, despite investigators saying it was probably not a terrorist attack.
"The executor of the stabbing operation in the city of Surgut in Russia is a soldier of the Daesh," IS (Daesh) propaganda outlet Amaq said in a statement, after the jihadists also claimed responsibility for twin attacks in Spain that left 14 dead.
The attack also comes a day after a stabbing spree in Finland, which left two people dead and eight others injured and is being investigated as a terrorist attack, although the assailant's motive is unknown.
Russia's Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, said a man in Surgut had "carried out attacks on passers-by, causing stab wounds". It said armed police called to the scene "liquidated" the attacker following the stabbing on Saturday morning.
Regional officials said seven people were taken to hospital, with the figure confirmed by investigators, who lowered an earlier toll of eight wounded.
A spokesman for regional police had earlier downplayed the possibility of a terrorist incident, telling Interfax news agency that the theory that the incident was "a terrorist (attack) is not the main one".
The Investigative Committee said it had established the attacker's identity, saying he was a local resident born in 1994, and that they were looking into "his possible psychiatric disorders".
Opposition leader Alexei Navalny questioned the authorities' treatment of the incident, writing on Twitter: "Someone runs round with a knife and tries to kill as many people as possible. What is that, if not a terrorist attack?"
Investigators have opened a criminal probe into attempted murder, not terrorism, with the Investigative Committee's chief Alexander Bastrykin taking the case under his personal control.
Regional police said officers fired warning shots at the scene before firing at the suspect, who was wearing a balaclava.
YouTube footage shown on Russia's Ren TV television showed a black-clad man lying on a pedestrian walkway with a policeman kneeling on his back as sirens wail.
Unconfirmed reports from the Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid and other media identified the attacker as 19-year-old Artur Gadzhiyev, saying that his father is known to authorities for involvement in radical religious organisations and comes from the mainly Muslim region of Dagestan in the North Caucasus.
Regional officials said four of those stabbed remained in a serious condition while another was stable in hospital. Two have already been discharged.
Russian television reported that the stabbing victims are aged between 27 and 77 and include two women.
State news agency TASS said the city's largest shopping centre was evacuated after the stabbings, citing its director, and police posted a video of the attack site, showing it to be a busy area with traffic and blocks of flats.
The city lies some 2,100 kilometres (1,330 miles) northeast of Moscow in the oil-rich Khanty-Mansi region.
The region's governor was flying out to the city to hold a meeting with investigators, regional authorities said.
The regional government moved to curb panic in the city, insisting the "situation is under the control of the authorities" and calling for calm.
A group suspected of links to Al-Qaeda claimed an April attack on the Saint Petersburg metro that killed 15 people and has been blamed on a Russian suicide bomber born in the Central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan.
Daesh claims Russia knife attack wounding 7
Daesh claims Russia knife attack wounding 7
How a Syrian refugee chef met Britain’s King Charles
- Alarnab, 48, said he had asked the king to come to the popular eatery when he met him at Buckingham Palace
LONDON: Pots clanged and oil sizzled inside the London kitchen of Syrian chef Imad Alarnab, as the former refugee who fled his country’s civil war recalled hosting King Charles III.
When the chef left his war-torn homeland in 2015, he never imagined that one day he would watch as cameras flashed and wide-eyed crowds greeted the monarch arriving at his Soho restaurant last year.
Alarnab, 48, said he had asked the king to come to the popular eatery when he met him at Buckingham Palace before an event honoring humanitarian work in 2023.
“I told him ‘I would love for you to visit our restaurant one day’ and he said: ‘I would love to’... I was over the Moon to be honest.”
The chef has come a long way since he arrived in London after an arduous journey from Damascus with virtually no money in his pocket.
Fearing for his life, he had escaped Syria after his family was uprooted again and again by fighting.
His culinary empire — restaurants, cafes, and juice bars peppered across the Syrian capital — had been destroyed by bombing in just six days in 2013.
Alarnab spent three months crisscrossing Europe in the back of lorries, aboard trains, on foot and even on a bicycle before he reached the UK.
“When I left, I left with nothing,” he told AFP, as waiters whirled past carrying steaming plates of traditional Syrian fare.
Starving and exhausted, he spent the last of his money on a train ticket to Doncaster where his sister lived.
“Love letter from Syria”
To make a living, Alarnab initially picked up any odd jobs, such as washing and selling cars, saving enough to bring his wife and three daughters over after seven months.
His love of cooking never left him though. In France, while he was sleeping on the steps of a church, Alarnab had often cooked for hundreds of other refugees.
“I always dreamed of going back to cooking,” he said.
So it wasn’t long before he found himself back in the kitchen, cooking up a storm across London with his sold-out supper clubs, bustling pop-up cafes, and crowded lunchtime falafel bars.
Alarnab’s friends gave him the initial boost for his first pop-up in 2017, and profits from his new catering business then covered the costs of later events.
He now runs two restaurants in the city — one in Soho’s buzzing Kingly Court and another nestled in a corner of the vibrant Somerset House arts center.
“I was looking for a city to love when I found London,” Alarnab said, adding it had offered him “space to innovate” and add his own modern twist to classic Syrian dishes.
Far from home, Alarnab said his word-of-mouth success had grown into a “love letter from Syria to the world” that needs no translation.
“You don’t really need to speak Arabic or Syrian to know that this is the best falafel ever,” he said, pointing to a row of colorful plates.
“There is hope”
For Alarnab, spices frying, dough rising and cheese melting inside a kitchen offered an unlikely escape from the real world.
“All my problems, I leave them outside the kitchen and walk in fresh.”
When he fled Syria, Alarnab thought going back to Damascus was forever off the table.
Yet he returned for the first time in October, almost a year to the day after longtime leader Bashar Assad was toppled in a lightning rebel offensive — ending almost 14 years of brutal civil war.
He walked the familiar streets of his old home, where his late mother taught him to cook many years ago.
“To return to Damascus and for her not to be there, that was extremely difficult.”
Torn between the two cities, Alarnab said he longed to one day rebuild his home in Damascus.
“I wish I could go back and live there. But at the same time, I feel like London is now a part of me. I don’t know if I could ever go back and just be in Syria,” he said.
Although Syrians still bear the scars of war, Alarnab said he had seen “hope in people’s eyes which was missing when I left in 2015.”
“The road ahead is still very long, and yes this is only the beginning — but there is hope.”
