The uncle of the brothers suspected of carrying out last week's Boston bombings has told ITV News he feels great sympathy and pity for the victims. Speaking from his home in Dagestan, he said he was struggling to believe his nephews were responsible.
Residents in the Northern Caucasus state of Dagestan have said they are surprised by the "huge reaction" the attacks in Boston have received across the world.
Dagestan is a focal point of insurgency in the region, where militants wage almost daily violence to establish an Islamist state.
Caucasian Knot, a website dedicated monitoring the violence, says 124 people have been killed and 75 wounded in the first three months of this year across predominantly Muslim Russian provinces, stretching from the Caspian to the Black Sea, including Dagestan and Chechnya.
Read: Boston bomb suspects' background in Chechnya
A young Dagestan resident told Reuters:
Detectives in Boston are looking further afield as they piece together their case against Marathon suspect Dzohkhar Tsarnaev.
The uncle of Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev described his recent visit to Dagestan in Russia and his great shock at the attacks.
Both men were enrolled in a school in Dagestan, a neighbouring region that was drawn into Chechnya's violence during the 1990s.