Moscow, Russia — A man stabbed at least six people in a downtown Moscow synagogue Wednesday, wounding some seriously before the rabbi's son wrestled the assailant to the ground, according to witnesses and officials, who called the attack a hate crime.
Jewish officials and witnesses said the man, who had a shaved head and wore a leather jacket, burst into the building calling out, “I will kill people, I will kill Jews.”
Chief Moscow prosecutor Anatoly Zuyev told reporters that eight people were wounded, including a U.S. citizen, an Israeli and a Tajik citizen; he did not provide details about the non-Russians.
“The attacker was shouting words that showed he was motivated by ethnic and religious hatred,” Mr. Zuyev said.
He said the alleged attacker was in custody and had been identified as Alexander Koptsev, a Moscow resident born in 1985. He said it was not immediately clear whether the suspect was a member of any anti-Semitic or neo-Nazi groups.
“I saw a man run in. He had a big knife,” said a woman who worked in the kitchen at the synagogue and gave only her first name, Svetlana. “I saw people lying on the floor, cut by a knife.”
She said the man apparently attacked people in the kitchen before going upstairs and attacking people in offices until he was stopped.
The man had a knife sheath hanging around his neck, she said.
Avraham Berkowitz, the executive director of Jewish communities in the former Soviet Union, said people inside the building had reported that the attacker got past security.
Mr. Berkowitz said Yosif Kogan, the son of the synagogue's rabbi, Yitzak Kogan, wrestled the assailant to the ground and held him until police arrived.
Russian news reports said the country's top prosecutor, Vladimir Ustinov, was taking control of the investigation.
The stabbing is the latest in a series of attacks in Russia that appear to have links to skinheads or racist groups. Rights groups have warned that hate groups have substantially increased their activities in recent years, targeting mainly foreigners and dark-skinned immigrants from the poorer former Soviet republics of the Caucasus and Central Asia.
Many rights groups say prosecutors routinely play down hate crimes, bringing less-serious charges than they could. Russia has a history of pogroms and anti-Semitism.
The Russian Orthodox Church condemned the attack.
“Law-enforcement agencies and authorities and all of society must do everything so that such a thing is not repeated, either in the centre of Moscow or anywhere else,” the RIA-Novosti news agency quoted Rev. Vsevolod Chaplin, a church spokesman, as saying.
Borukh Gorin, a spokesman for the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, said the attack should serve as a message to government and society to fight racism and anti-Semitism.
He called it “the latest result of the brazen and practically unpunished propaganda of fascism in this country.”
“If today's act does not sound an alarm, society faces grave danger.” he said