Photo: Reuters
Two police officers were killed in clashes with “radical Islamists” in Azerbaijan’s second city of Ganja, with authorities arresting 40 people, the Caucasus nation said late Tuesday, AFP reports.
“Some 200 supporters of a radical religious movement attempted to stage riots outside a local government building in Ganja,” the interior ministry said in a statement on Tuesday evening.
“Two officers were killed,” it said, adding that police took half an hour “to restore order in central Ganja”.
Forty protesters were arrested, the ministry said.
APA news agency reported the clashes broke out in support of a man who was arrested last week in Ganja on suspicion of shooting and wounding the city’s mayor.
Prosecutors said the man, Unis Safarov, was a member of a “radical religious organisation” that plotted “terrorist acts aimed at sowing chaos in Azerbaijan, with the ultimate goal of seizing power and establishing a Shariah rule.”
Safarov, a 35-year-old Russian national, underwent military training in Iran and Syria in 2016, they said.
