Cameroonian striker Samuel Eto’o caused a stir when he joined the Anzhi Makachkala football club, a small obscure outfit in the Russian Republic of Dagestan, the powder keg of the Russian North Caucasus. His salary is a whopping 20 million euros a year. But the club is not just a billionaire’s plaything - it is also a social project for developing a region which is using sport to fight terrorism.
Four gunmen and at least seven Russian police were reportedly killed in a shootout Thursday, in the turbulent North Caucasus region of Dagestan, where the Russian military is struggling to contain an Islamist insurgency.
Five people were killed and 39 wounded when a suicide bomber blew up a car outside a military base in Russia's troubled Dagestan region. Authorities have been battling an Islamist insurgency in the North Caucasus regions for several years.
Eight people, most of them workers, were killed Thursday in an early-morning bomb attack in Russia's violence-plagued North Caucasus province of Dagestan, police said.
A suicide car bomb exploded near a Russian military base in the troubled region of Dagestan Sunday, the Interfax news agency said. The blast happened hours before a huge military parade in Moscow to celebrate the 65th anniversary of the end of WWII.
One of the perpetrators of Moscow's metro bombings has been identified as the 17-year-old widow of a Dagestani Islamist militant, media reports said Friday, as the death toll rose to 40 following the death of a man wounded in Monday's twin attacks.
As the 39 victims of Monday's lethal suicide bombings were being buried in Moscow, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was in troubled North Caucasus region of Dagestan where he called for uncompromising anti-terror measures.
Two people were killed in Russia's southern region of Dagestan overnight Thursday when their car - which is thought to have been packed with explosives - blew up, Russian news agencies reported.
Instability in the North Caucasian republics of Dagestan, Ingushetia and Chechnya is intensifying. Violence and corruption are endemic, and Moscow is struggling to maintain a grip on the Russian Federation's restive southern republics.
Dagestan 
