Four Indian students were injured in a knife attack at a medical university dormitory in the republic of Bashkortostan this weekend, India’s Embassy in Moscow said Monday, coming after police reported that the 15-year-old assailant was arrested and hospitalized after sustaining self-inflicted wounds.
Investigators in the Bashkortostan capital of Ufa, located around 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) east of Moscow, said two police officers were stabbed by the attacker when they tried to arrest him at the Bashkir State Medical University on Saturday.
Law enforcement authorities pressed multiple charges, including attempted murder of a police officer.
Unconfirmed reports claimed the 15-year-old attacker was in critical condition after he allegedly tried to take his own life. Those reports also suggested the teenager may have been linked to a neo-Nazi group banned in Russia.
India’s Embassy in Moscow said four Indian citizens were injured in the attack. Officials from the Indian Consulate General in Kazan were sent to assist the victims.
The All India Medical Students’ Association, an advocacy organization based in Delhi, wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging him to take “immediate diplomatic steps to ensure justice for the attacked students.”
The head of Bashkortostan, Radiy Khabirov, said security at regional universities would be improved following Saturday’s attack. He also said regional authorities were ready to sponsor flights to Russia for the family members of the victims if needed.
On Monday, Khabirov told a government meeting that the knife attack was an isolated incident and did not reflect a “rampant spread of neo-Nazism” in the region, seeming to address reports of the assailant’s alleged ties to a neo-Nazi group.
“We live in peace and harmony with other nationalities,” he said.
Russia has recorded several knife attacks across its schools since the start of winter.
In December, a 10-year-old Tajik boy at a school outside Moscow was fatally stabbed by a ninth-grader in what is widely believed to have been a race-motivated attack.
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