The police are working to establish the identity of a man who attempted to set fire to a mosque in Russia’s southern city of Volgograd, the Interior Ministry’s regional branch said in a press release.
“At around 2:00 a.m. on Thursday, an unknown man threw a bottle filled with an as yet unidentified substance at a window on the ground floor of a mosque located in Volgograd’s Voroshilovsky District. But the window was not broken. No fire broke out,” it said.
An inquiry is underway. A criminal investigation may soon be opened on the counts of intentional destruction or damage of property through arson (Article 167 of the Russian Penal Code) and hooliganism (Article 213).
Early on October 22, unknown persons tried to set fire to a house belonging to the head of the Makhallya 1350 Muslim religious organization by hurling Molotov cocktails at the building. No one was killed or injured in the incident. Building tenants managed to extinguish the fire on their own.
Suicide bomber Naida Asiyalova from Dagestan set off a bomb on a bus in Volgograd on October 21, killing six people and injuring another 55, including 20 children.