Four staff members at a maximum-security prison, IK-19 in the Volgograd region of Russia died after four inmates took the employees hostage, the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service has said in a statement. The perpetrators were later eliminated in a special operation carried out by federal prison staff and the Russian National Guard.

The prisoners took eight prison employees and four convicts hostage yesterday. The criminals inflicted stab wounds of varying severity on four employees, three of whom died. Another four who resisted were hospitalised, one of whom died in the hospital. The Russian Investigative Committee has initiated a criminal case into the incident. It is the second incident of prisoners with apparent Islamic State connections taking hostages, following a similar siege at a jail in the southern Rostov region in June this year.