Sochi Olympics under preventive terror guard
Russian special forces are engaged in a relentless offensive to pin down known Islamist terrorists on their home ground or hideouts in Dagestan, Chechnya, Kirgizstan and Kabardino Balkaria, casting a wide safety net around the Winter Olympic Games which opened in Sochi Friday, Feb. 7. DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources report this safety net has been spread across three European countries.
In the last few days, seven armed jihadis were killed in Russian operations; another three civilians died in terrorist action; and many arrests were carried out, targeting suspected female suicide killers in the Caucasian, as well as in France, Austria and Germany.
Saturday, Feb. 8, Russian special forces stormed a third-floor apartment in Makhachkala, Dagestan on information that a gang was preparing to strike sporting events. Five Islamist fighters were killed resisting arrest and a sixth turned himself in.
A second Russian force surrounded a building in the Dagestan town of Derbent, known as a jihadist stronghold, in which an armed Islamist terrorist suspect was holed up in a ninth floor apartment. He was killed after a woman and three children were allowed to leave.
