Russians officials announced earlier today an attack on churches and synagogues in the country’s Dagestan region killing primarily police officers and 19 others over Islamist violence in the historically restive North Caucasus during the 1990s and 2000s.

The assaults launched on Sunday come just three months after Islamic State group fighters killed more than 140 in a Moscow concert hall, the deadliest terror attack on Russia for almost 20 years.

According to reports from Moscow, Russia’s capital, it revealed that it killed five of the assailants behind the coordinated attacks on Sunday evening in a just concluded anti-terrorist operation in the cities of Makhachkala and Derbent.

Russia has been a target for Islamic State terror in recent years, with the fundamentalist group opposing Moscow’s military support for Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and claiming to have set up a “franchise” in Russia’s north Caucasus.