Irina Melkomova, who was thought to be approximately 60-years-old, began shouting and hitting the attacker with her bags outside St George the Victorious Church in the town of Kizlyar.

She was killed by 22-year-old Khalil Khalil, who also murdered four other people at the Russian Orthodox Church in the Dagestan region last Sunday (18th February).

Melkomova’s actions gave people inside the church time to lock the church door.

The rector of Saint George the Victorious Fr Pavel Kalikin told the Caucasian Knot: “All people who were at the temple and on the yard in front of it stayed alive due to our believer Irina Melkomova.

“While she attracted the killer’s attention, the believers managed to hide inside the temple.”

Five people, including three police officers who shot Khalilov dead at the scene, were wounded in the incident. Islamic State has claimed responsibility.

Three people have been arrested in connected with the attack, including a 19-year-old man called Magometrasul Gadjiev.

Gadjiev studied at the same Muslim school as Khalilov, according to Dodzd, a Russian broadcaster.

Searching the home of Khalilov, police found an Islamic State flag hanging on the wall and footage of the young man pledging allegiance to Islamic extremists.

Funerals for the victims have been taking…

Asked whether the American actress’s previous marriage to film producer Trevor Engelson posed a barrier, Most Rev Justin Welby said “clearly, it’s not a problem”. Engelson and Markle married in 2011 and split in 2013.

Speaking during a press conference attended by Premier at Lambeth Palace, Archbishop Justin said: “The Church of England has rules about how you deal with that and we’ve dealt with that.

“The Church of England has a very clear statement on the nature of when people who have been divorced who have a previously partner still living can get married and we went through that.”

Since 2002, a divorcee may be allowed to marry again in the Church of England during the lifetime of a former spouse in “exceptional circumstances”.

Prince Harry and Ms Markle announced their engagement last November.

The Church, which teaches that marriage is “for life”, allows clergy discretion in whether they decide to officiate at such a marriage or allow the use of their church for the occasion.

Archbishop Justin, who will officiate at the ceremony inside St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle at midday on 19th May, said he is “looking forward to it enormously”.

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The 65-year-old, who has repeatedly been branded a Prosperity Gospel preacher, said he was “as guilty as others” who have sometimes departed from Biblical teaching.

In a Facebook Live broadcast, he said: “We get attacked for preaching prosperity; well, it’s in the Bible.

“But I think some have gone to the extreme with it, sadly, and it’s not God’s word what is taught and I think I’m as guilty as others.

“Sometimes you go a little farther than you really need to go and then God brings you back to normality and reality.”

Prosperity theology has been described as affirming that Christians are automatically entitled to financial and health blessings.

Hinn said that, with age and developing greater understanding, he realised that unbiblical interpretations of scripture influenced his teaching.

Hinn’s ministry was investigated by US politicians on the Senate Committee on Finance in 2007, to determine whether he had benefit personally from donations made to his church work.

The probe, which concluded four years later, issued no punishment and conclusion that Benny Hinn Ministries was guilty of any wrongdoing.

Hinn, who has been accused in the past of lavish living, said he no longer travels by private jet, saying “I fly commercial just like anyone else…”

Staff at the Christian humanitarian charity CAFOD urged believers to intercede, hours before a vote among the United Nations Security Council in New York at 5pm (UK time).

Alan Thomlinson, CAFOD’s Syria Crisis Programme Manager, told Premier that believers can be “praying for a ceasefire, for humanitarian access and that all sides would be able to come together and find a negotiated settlement and a peaceful settlement to this conflict”.

The call for prayer came at activists claimed 32 people died during a sixth day of air strikes by Syrian government warplanes on rebel-held areas in and around eastern Damascus.

The fatalities, reported by the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, suggest more than 450 people have now died in violence in or near eastern Ghouta district.

Referring to eastern Ghouta, Alan Thomlinson said: “The challenge is that this is an urban area with over 400,000 civilians stay living there; they are trapped in this cycle of violence.”

Members of the UN Security Council are due to vote on a draft resolution which will demand a nationwide ceasefire and warn that 5.6 million people in Syria are in “acute need”.

Mr Thomlinson added: “We’re calling for an immediate ceasefire to allow humanitarian access, allow agencies in to provide food…