A 20-year-old nut has burst into the synagogue across the street from where we live in Moscow and stabbed a dozen or so people with a knife. Horrible. (And yet, one of the thoughts that ran through my head as I read about it was: "Damn, the news is breaking right next to our house and I'm not there." But Moscow seems like a different planet now...)

Here's more from the Haaretz:

A man armed with a knife stabbed and wounded 11 people, including three Israelis, in a synagogue in downtown Moscow on Wednesday.

[...]

Moscow police arrested a man identified as Alexander Koftzev, suspected of carrying out the attack. He was reported to be in his 20s from Moscow. Moscow authorities said the incident appeared to be anti-Semitic, but that other motives were also being investigated.

An initial investigation reveals that a skinhead wearing a leather jacket told the guards at the entrance to the synagogue that "I will kill people. I will kill Jews," before bursting into the synagogue.

[...]

"I saw a man run in. He had a big knife," said one 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 she had heard the man had attacked people in the kitchen while people were eating, and then went upstairs and began to attack people in offices before he was stopped by the synagogue's rabbi and others.

She said the man had a knife sheath hanging around his neck. [...]

According to Gazeta.ru, eight people have been wounded, among them a U.S. citizen, an Israeli and a Tajik. (The Tajik must've been a construction worker.) I hope all of them recover real soon...

(And all of a sudden I've got a terrible craving for the delicious blinchiki with meat I used to buy at this synagogue... And khinkaly... yes, kosher khinkaly... No, but I don't really miss Moscow, not yet, not when I think that I'll have to fly there with Marta, not when I try, in vain, to think of a place where it'd be nice to go for a walk with her there, on weekdays...)