Makhachkala (Russia): Russian police say they have identified the female suicide bomber who killed an influential Muslim leader in the volatile province of Dagestan.
Said Afandi was a leader of a Sufi Muslim brotherhood whose followers include thousands of officials, clerics and businessmen. The 85-year-old Afandi was killed yesterday along with six other people in the village of Chirkei by a bomber disguised as a pilgrim who visited his house.
The mystical Muslim orders of Sufis, popular in Dagestan and neighboring provinces of Russia`s multiethnic Caucasus region, are opposed to radical and militant Islamist groups that mushroomed there after the Soviet collapse.
Police in Dagestan said today that the bomber was Aminat Kurbanova, a 30-year-old resident of Dagestan`s capital, Makhachkala.
The Interfax news agency claimed she was married to an Islamist militant.
PTI
