Telegram has blocked a channel popular in Russia’s Muslim-majority Dagestan republic after government officials blamed it for inspiring a violent mob that breached the area’s main airport looking for passengers on a flight from Israel. On Sunday, hundreds of protesters broke into Makhachkala Uytash airport in Dagestan, a republic in southern Russia near the Caspian Sea, and onto a runway to meet a flight arriving from Tel Aviv.
Telegram’s founder, Pavel Durov, said in a post to his Russian-language account early Monday that accounts calling for violence would be blocked. The post included a screenshot of a Morning of Dagestan post. The riot is one of the latest instances of international unrest inspired by the deepening war between Israel and Hamas, the group that runs Gaza’s government and is also officially recognized by many Western countries as a terrorist organization.