ISIS terror attack on Moscow synagogue foiled, Russia says

Russia claims ISIS terrorists were killed ahead of their planned attack on synagogue.

By David Rosenberg, World Israel News

Russian security forces foiled a planned attack on a synagogue in Moscow, Russian state news agencies said Thursday.

According to the reports, a cell aligned with the ISIS terror group operating out of Kaluga, southwest of Moscow, was planning a shooting attack on Russian Jews at a Moscow synagogue.

Members of Russia’s FSB security service raided the ISIS cell’s compound in Kaluga, resulting in a gun battle that left multiple terrorists dead.

Thus far there have been no details released regarding the number of terrorists killed in the shootout, though footage released from the scene showed at least two dead bodies inside the compound.

“During further operational investigative activities, it was established that militants of an international terrorist organization are preparing an attack on synagogue parishioners using firearms,” an FSB spokesperson said Thursday.

The FSB said its officers found guns, ammunition, knives, and at least one bomb during the raid.

“While being arrested, the terrorists put up armed resistance to the Russian FSB officers, and as a result were neutralised by return fire,” an FSB spokesperson told Russia’s TASS news agency.

“Firearms, ammunition, as well as components for the manufacture of an improvised explosive device were found and seized.”

The terrorists killed during the gun battle were reportedly affiliated with Vilayat Khorasan, ISIS’ Afghanistan branch.

In October, Alexander Bortnikov warned that the Afghan-based Vilayat Khorasan could coon carry out attacks abroad.

“In the near future, it can achieve a capacity that will allow it to carry out attacks outside of Afghanistan.”

On Saturday, a Swiss teenager of Tunisian descent stabbed an Orthodox Jewish man, identified as 50-year-old Meir Zvi Jung, in Zurich after pledging allegiance o ISIS.

In a video statement filmed on his cellphone and later published by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), the terrorist, Ahmad Al-Dhabbah, said he was responding to ISIS’ call for a global Jihad against “the Jews and Christians and their criminal allies.”

Al-Dhabbah vowed he would begin his service to ISIS by “storming a Jewish synagogue and attempting to kill and harm as many Jews as possible,” then leaving and “trying to behead any unbelievers outside.”