Demonstrators raided a shopping center and stormed a vegetable warehouse in Moscow on Sunday following the stabbing death of an ethnic Russian man, The Associated Press reported. Yegor Shcherbakov, the 25-year-old victim, was reportedly killed by a native of the predominantly Muslim North Caucasus, a region in southern Russia.
Russia's main investigative agency The Investigative Committee said in a statement that Shcherbakov was killed by an assailant following a dispute involving his girlfriend as they walked out of a billiards club in the southern Biryulovo district.
"According to available data, the person allegedly involved in the murder of a young man in Vostryakovskiy Lane is a native of Azerbaijan Orhan Zeynalov. Operational and investigative measures are conducted to arrest the suspect," the police said. The 26-year-old Zeynalov has been detained by authorities.
Largely nationalist protests ensued, particularly in the southern Moscow district, Agence France Press reported. Scenes of "bloody clashes with police... left the glass doors of a shopping center smashed and cars upturned," AFP also reported.
Police said that 394 people, reportedly between the ages of 14 and 25, were arrested near the riots. Rioters also attacked a stopped cargo train, news reports said.
The protests began peacefully on Saturday, but rioting broke out Sunday as protesters raided the vegetable market, in the building where the suspect was believed to be hiding. Moscow police soon stormed the produce market, and detained 1,200 people, seeking identity checks, AFP also reported.
The functioning of the vegetable warehouse was suspended for five days, as the sanitary condition was deemed as unsatisfactory, local Russian news reported. The audit results will be transferred to the court for further proceedings.
A regular migration control checkpoint would be set up on the vegetable base.
Tensions have been high between ethnic Russians and migrants from the Causcasus as well as the Muslim states of ex-Soviet Central Asia for many years.
Police are expected to be patrolling streets near Moscow's major mosques on Tuesday as Russian Muslims celebrate Kurban Bayram, the annual feast of the sacrifice.
The riots are being described as the worst of its kind since Russian soccer football fans and ultra-nationalists clashed on Manezhnaya Square in December 2010, AFP also reported.
