MOSCOW, August 11 (RIA Novosti) – An official from Russia’s drug control agency was killed on Sunday evening by a group of gunmen in the capital of the North Caucasus republic of Dagestan, according to police.
“At about 10:00 p.m. in the Palmir dacha village in Makhachkala a group of unidentified people entered into a private house and gunned down an officer of the Federal Drug Control Agency,” a police spokesman said. The dead man was on his own in the house before the attack, the police spokesman added.
The Federal Drug Control Agency (FSKN) is responsible for drafting anti-narcotics legislation and combating the illegal drugs trade.
Attacks on security forces, police and civilians occur regularly in Dagestan and are understood to be generated by ethnic, religious and political rivalries, as well as poverty and corruption. The violence is also fed by an Islamist insurgency, which originated in the neighboring republic of Chechnya after a series of bloody post-Soviet separatist wars, and has spread across the North Caucasus in recent years.
