A rabbi of a Chabad Center in Russia’s North Caucasus republic of Dagestan was seriously wounded Thursday by an unidentified shooter, an attack Jewish leaders blamed on “jihadists” and “terrorists.”
Police speaks of a ‘’possible anti-Semitic attack.’’
Artur (Ovadia) Isakov, 40, was wounded in the chest while on the way to his house in the southern city of Derbent, police said, adding that he was hospitalized in a “critical condition.” One bullet entered his right lung and his liver.
A medical worker at Derbent's central hospital told Russian RIA Novosti agency that the rabbi is in an intensive-care unit and has been put on a ventilator to help him breathe.
An Israeli plane with a medical team aboard will fly to Russia to help treat Isakov.
Russia’s Chief Rabbi Berl Lazar accused radical Islamists for the attack and called on the Russian authorities to find and prosecute the perpetrators – and to “take all legal actions to destroy the jihadist underground,” according to the Moscow-based Jewish News Agency.
Isakov is the second religious person attacked this year in Dagestan, according to the Kavkazky Uzel news website. In March, an imam was gunned down in the eastern village of Gubden, it said, and eight more Muslim clerics, including the head of a powerful Sufi brotherhood, were killed in Dagestan in 2012, it said.
Ramazan Abdulatipov, acting president of Dagestan, released a statement blaming “extremists and terrorists who do not want a happy, normal life for us all” for the attack. “Only ignorant people, enemies of Dagestan, are able to do this. Dagestan is outraged,” he wrote in a statement.
As a Chabad emissary, the rabbi oversaw construction of a large community center in Derbent, a city that hosts a small Jewish community that arrived from Iran in the early Middle Ages.
The European Jewish Congress expressed its ‘’deep concern and shock’’ following the shooting.
“Our thoughts are with Rabbi Isakov’s family and community at this time. We understand that a police investigation is underway and we are in close contact with our Russian affiliate,” said EJC Secretary-General Serge Cwajgenbaum.
“We are of course aware of the growth of Islamist extremism in the region and violence perpetrated by these groups, but we should reserve comment while we await the results of the police investigation,” he added.