ASTANA, June 30. /TASS/. Six radical Islamists have been detained in central Kazakhstan’s Karaganda region and one of them has blown himself up, chairman of the country’s National Security Committee Vladimir Zhumakanov said on Thursday.
"The detainees belong to the Salafi movement," he said. "All of them are local residents, the citizens of Kazakhstan," Zhumakanov said, adding that the events in the Karaganda region are not linked to the attacks in Aktobe.
The republic’s National Security Committee said on Wednesday that the activity of a radical group that had plotted terrorist attacks with the use of self-made explosive devices was curbed in Balhash and Gulshat in the Karaganda region.
On June 5, a group of followers of the Salafi movement, a radical branch of Sunni Islam, carried out attacks at two arms shops and the National Guard’s military unit in Aktobe. Eight people died in the attack, including three servicemen, and dozens more were injured. Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee later reported that all 18 attackers were killed and nine others were detained in a special operation.
Kazakh Interior Minister Kalmukhanbet Kasymov later told reporters the terrorists who carried out attacks in Aktobe had received instructions from Syria’s territory.