We have breaking news out of Russia, a series of attacks at houses of worship in the Southern region of Daghistan. A synagogue was set on fire, and at least one priest was killed at a nearby Catholic Church. Authorities say a group of militants, armed with automatic weapons, coordinated the attacks in the city of Derbent. Meanwhile, police just north of there were involved in a shootout after an attack on a traffic post. Authorities have now launched a terror investigation. Cnn's Claire Sebastian is tracking the latest for us London. Claire, what is the latest on all of this?

Yeah, Alison. Authorities are saying that they believe these attacks in two different cities, Mahachkala and Derbent. They're about 80 miles apart, are coordinated. They are, as you say, now investigating these attacks under the terrorism article of the Russian Criminal Code. The key target seems to have been religious sites. Russian official sources are talking about a synagogue and a church in the city of Derbent being attacked, and we're hearing about a shootout at a in Mahachkala, where, according to Russian state media, quoting the Dagestani Interior Ministry, 19 people who had been taking shelter in that church are now safe. The Israeli Foreign Ministry has also put out a statement saying that two synagogues were involved, one in each city. So the situation right now, extremely fluid. There are videos and accounts coming through on the social media channel of the Dagestani Interior Ministry showing that fighting on the streets of both cities is still ongoing. A major police operation. The death and injury toll has been updated by the Muftiat. This is the religious Islamic administrative organization in Dagestan. They're now saying that nine have been killed, of which seven law enforcement officers. But we believe the other was a priest at a church in Derebent, or according to the public monitoring commission there, he had his throat slit.

So some gruesome details coming through there, and also a security guard, and then on top of that, 25 injured. But as I said, extremely fluid, and we believe still Very much ongoing, even though it's now getting pretty late in the evening there in Daghistan.

Okay, Claire Sebastian, thank you very much for all of that reporting. For more, let's turn now to CNN National Security Analyst, Beth Sanher. Okay, so, Beth, you just heard Claire's reporting. Nine people killed, seven of them law enforcement, 25 injured. What clues do you see in these attacks?

Well, it does have the hallmarks of an ISISK attack. The viewers will remember the big Crocus City Hall concert hall attack in March, and that killed about 144 people. Then there was a previous one in Iran. Both of those attacks, by the way, the United States warned both Russia and Iran that these attacks were coming, weren't heated. But this looks like another ISISK attack to me.

So if this is an ISISK attack against a synagogue and a Catholic church, what does ISISK want other than death and chaos?

Right. And so this is not just some far away place, Allison. We are watching right now the threat from ICS-K, which is based in Afghanistan, now spreading around the world to some extent. So the French recently thwarted an attack related to the Olympics. The Germans, the Euro Cup Games, just arrested several people. And we arrested, about two weeks ago, eight Tajiks, also associated with the Islamic State, who had snuck in across our borders. And so what they're trying to do is, in ICS-K, they do want to have a caliphate, just like they had in Syria and Iraq. But they also want to attack Christians, Jews, non-Muslims.

So how does Vladimir Putin respond to this?

Well, so right after the Crocus attack, the concert hall attack, they wrapped up a cell in Daghistan. They arrested a bunch of people. They're now on trial with the rest of the gang. They were said to have provided the weapons. We're going to see more of a crackdown. The Russians the way they crack down is pretty brutal. But at the same time, that brutality doesn't necessarily eliminate the threat. So in some cases, it worsens it in terms of the extremist views of certain parts of that population. And, you know, ISIS has had a relationship with the Muslim community, not the majority, but 20% of Isis foreign fighters in Syria came from Russia and the former Soviet States, and a lot of them from Daghestan. So they're going to crack down, but we can't expect this to go away.

Daghestan is not often in front of our mind, except, of course, we're all reminded of the awful Boston Marathon bombing, where the Tsarnaev brothers came from there. Why has this region of Daghistan been allowed to be so volatile and violent for so long?

Well, the ability of the Russian state to effectively deal with these restive provinces. Daghistan is right next to Chechnya. Another place, the Northern caucuses, has always been this hotbed of Islamic extremism. And the only way that Russia has dealt with in the past is Chechnya and two bloody wars that killed many, many Russian soldiers, as well as nor Chechens. And then he put a leader in charge that has brutally oppressed that population. So it's extremely hard to deal with, and especially in a very diverse region. One of the things he's been doing is he's been forcing a lot of Dagostani young men to fight in the war in Ukraine, but that has actually probably increased the extremism there.

Beth Senator, thank you very much. Roll of your expertise on this.

Thanks.