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Owner of garage used as terrorist lab detained in Nalchik

The total amount of self-made explosive devices was equivalent to more than 100 kilograms of TNT

Photo ITAR-TASS

Photo ITAR-TASS

MOSCOW, March 14 (Itar-Tass) — The owner of the garage in the southern city of Nalchik used as a laboratory for manufacturing powerful explosive devices, has been detained, a source from the information centre of the National Antiterrorism Committee has told Tass.

This is an active member of a gang operating in Nalchik, Tembulat Kazdokhov, born in 1984. He was identified and detained in a police operation within less than one day. Kazdokhov was blocked in one of garages in Nalchik’s Zavodskaya Street and FSB officers persuaded him to surrender. Weapons, ammunition and grenades were found on him, the source added.

An investigation continues. Earlier on Wednesday, a representative from the information centre of the National Antiterrorism Committee said a lab for the production of self-made explosive devices was discovered in one of garages in Nalchik’s Dagestanskaya Street, in an operation carried out overnight to Wednesday by the regional departments of the FSB and the Interior Ministry.

During the search in the garage with a basement, nine self-made explosive devices, components for making bombs, highly-explosive substances and different instruments and gadgets were found, the source said.

“The total amount of self-made explosive devices was equivalent to more than 100 kilograms of TNT. According to bomb experts, this capacity was enough to destroy a whole residential area,” sources from the National Antiterrorist Committee said.

“According to operation information we posses, bandits were masterminding high-profile subversive-terrorist acts in Nalchik,” the sources added. Explosive devices were intended for terrorist acts in places of mass congestion, they stressed.

The operation has made it possible to thwart a chain of terrorist acts in Nalchik and avert numerous casualties.

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