The militant group responsible for a devastating attack on Chechnya's capital earlier this month allegedly claimed direct affiliation with the Islamic State in a video released Friday.

Two militants from the Caucasus Emirate, the group accused of orchestrating the December 4 attack in Grozny that killed 14 policemen and wounded 36 people, are shown pledging allegiance to the Islamic State in a clip published on YouTube.

The Caucasus Emirate's Dagestani Vilayyat emir appears to have sworn allegiance to ISIL. Thus the IK splits — Extremist Russia (@ExtremistRussia)December 20, 2014

Armed men rampaged through the streets of the Grozny earlier this month, seizing buildings and sparking gun battles that raged for hours. The assault began when militants stole three cars in the village of Shalazhi and attacked traffic police in nearby Grozny. They seized a school and printing house in the city, and video footage from the scene showed a fierce firefight with heavy machine gun fire and RPGs being launched into at least three burning buildings.

Moscow has waged two bloody wars against nationalist and Islamist rebels in Chechnya, but a crackdown by the feared security services of iron-fisted regional leader Ramzan Kadyrov had largely shifted the violence to the nearby Dagestan region.

But Russian professor Galina Yemelianova wrote an editorial for BBC this week noting that the attack was the third of its kind this year in Chechnya. As many as 2,000 Chechens have been fighting in Syria for the Islamic State, and Abu Omar al-Shishani, an ethnic Chechen from Georgia, is a top commander for the militant group. Yemelianova and other analysts have suggested the uptick of violence in Chechnya is linked to the conflict in Syria.

"Disaffected youths are being recruited as jihadists, Chechen fighters are returning from the Middle East ready to internationalize jihad and make Chechnya and the Caucasus generally part of a larger Islamic Caliphate," Yemelianova wrote. "There are certainly links between the Caucasus Emirate and jihadist groupings fighting in Iraq and Syria."

This story has been updated since it was initially published. An earlier version said the __Caucasus Emirate _militants were from Chechnya. They are actually from Dagestan. _

VICE News reporter Alec Luhn contributed to this article.