ISIS claims responsibility for knife attack that killed at least 7 in Russia

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MOSCOW (Reuters) - From seven to eight people were wounded in a knife attack in the Russian Siberian city of Surgut, local criminal investigators said on Saturday, adding that the attacker had been shot dead by police.

The militant Islamic State group, monitored in Cairo, said one of its fighters had carried out the attack, though a Russian law enforcement spokeswoman would not comment on whether police regarded the incident as terrorism related.

"A man was moving along the main streets stabbing people", the local law enforcement committee in Surgut said in a statement on its website. No-one was killed in the attack.

The attacker, who was born in 1994, had been killed, it said. It did not identify him by name.

"The committee is investigating attempted murder", its spokeswoman told Reuters by phone.

"The attacker responsible for the stabbing incident in Surgut in Russia is a fighter of the Islamic State", the group said through the AMAQ news agency.

The militant Islamist group, whose fighters are hard pressed by international coalition and national forces in Syria and Iraq, regularly claims links with attacks carried out in Europe.

The perpetrators of many attacks have often been inspired by the group's beliefs and acted alone, rather than been directed or organized by an Islamic State network on the ground.

(Reporting by Nadine Awadalla in Cairo and Denis Pinchuk in Moscow, additional reporting by Natasha Shurmina in Ekaterinburg; Writing by Denis Pinchuk,; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

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