Muslim cleric killed in Russia
A top Muslim cleric has been shot dead and another injured by a car bomb in Russia’s Tatarstan province, officials said.
Russia’s Investigative Committee said that Valiulla Yakupov, the deputy to the Muslim province’s chief mufti, was gunned down as he left his home in Tatarstan’s regional capital, Kazan, today.
Tatarstan investigator Eduard Abdullin told The Associated Press that chief mufti Ildus Fayzov was wounded in the leg after an explosive device ripped through his vehicle in central Kazan.
Both clerics were known as critics of radical Islamist groups which advocate a strict version of Islam known as Salafism.
Tatarstan is a Volga River province with a population of almost four million, more than half of whom are Sunni Muslims.
