December 3, 2016
A Dagestan-based militant leader who swore allegiance to Islamic State (IS, ISIS/ISIL), was picked as “emir” by IS chief al-Baghdadi and was linked to terrorist acts in Russia’s Volgograd, has been eliminated, the Federal Security Service (FSB) said.
“Rustan Magomedovich Aselderov (Abu Muhammad), born in 1981, the leader of the Vilayat Kavkaz section of the Islamic State international terrorist group, was among the militants eliminated alongside four of his close associates,” the FSB said in a statement.
Aselderov and four other militants were found hiding out in a house in the village. After the hideout was surrounded, the police started negotiations and asked the militants to surrender. In response, the terrorists fired automatic weapons and were killed by return fire. None of the officers taking part in the operation were injured.
A large cache of weapons was then discovered in the hideout, including automatic rifles, munitions and explosives.
The FSB said Aselderov was one of the organizers of the terrorist attack on Volgograd’s train station on December 29, 2013, which killed 18 people and left dozens injured after a suicide bomber blew herself up at the station’s entrance. Another suicide bomber targeted civilians in a Volgograd trolleybus on December 30, killing 16 people and injuring 25 others.
“From all the terrorist acts carried out by [Aselderov and his henchmen] the terrorist acts targeting public transport and railway station in Volgograd, which inflicted multiple casualties, are the bloodiest,” the FSB said in a statement.