Shootout in Russian city of Kazan leaves 1 cop dead, gunman arrested

Late last night Moscow time, reports surfaced in Russian media of an active shooter in the Russian city of Kazan.

The city of 1.1 million is capital of Russia’s oil rich region of Tatarstan, and will be one of the host cities for the 2018 World Cup to be held in June and July.

The shooting does not appear terror-related. Tatarstan is one of Russia’s historic Muslim-majority regions, though the variety of Islam practiced there is more moderate than in Russia’s Caucasus, Most Tatar women eschew the hijab, for example, and there is a more or less secular current in society.

Such shootings are infrequent in Russia, though this one comes on the heels of a church attack in Dagestan earlier on February 18th that killed 5 women. That attack was roundly condemned by Russia’s Muslim and Christian religious leaders.

Here’s more from RT:

A shootout in the Russian city of Kazan has ended in the death of a policeman after a disgruntled man tried to break into his ex-wife’s apartment with a gun. Special police were called to the scene, resulting in a tense stand-off

While there was initially confusion surrounding the fate of the attacker, press releases by both the Investigative Committee and the Interior Ministry branches in the Russian republic of Tatarstan have now confirmed the man was detained.

Police units were first called to a local apartment building by two residents who reported gunshots on the staircase. The attacker, who was armed with a hunting rifle and drunk at the time according to early police data, was reportedly attempting to break into his ex-wife’s apartment. She had filed a police complaint against him earlier, which resulted in him spending 10 days in custody just prior to the incident.

The shooter opened fire on the police, forcing them to call in special police reinforcements. He reportedly managed to injure three people, including a special forces officer who later died in hospital. Initial reports by the local Interior Ministry press service said the gunman took his own life as the law enforcers advanced on him.

Early reports also suggested that the perpetrator had an accomplice who managed to barricade himself inside an apartment, forcing the police to break in to detain him. A video circulating on the social network VKontakte (In Contact) shows police detaining a man, who is seen kneeling face down with his hands behind his back on a blood-stained floor next to what appears to be a dead body outside an apartment.