DUSHANBE, June 7, 2016, Asia-Plus – Kyrgyz police have reportedly been put on high alert after terrorist attacks in neighboring Kazakhstan
Russia’s TASS reports that the Kyrgyz Interior Ministry said yesterday that the entire personnel of the country’s interior authorities will be in a heightened degree of combat readiness from June 6, 2016, until further notice.
“Terrorist and extremist organizations have stepped up their activity in the Aktobe region of the Republic of Kazakhstan,” the ministry said.
Steps were reportedly needed in particular to ensure safety during a meeting of the CIS Council of Heads of Government, which is taking place in Bishkek today.
We will recall that suspected Islamist militants killed six people at a National Guard base and two stores selling firearms in the Kazakh industrial city of Aktobe on June 5.
Quoting the Interior Ministry of Kazakhstan, some media outlets reported yesterday that four of the attackers were killed and seven detained by police in a counter-terrorist operation. Some remained at large.
In near simultaneous attacks, the gunmen reportedly killed a clerk and a guard at one firearms store and then wounded three policemen who arrived at the site. At another firearms store, they killed a visitor before police arrived and killed three attackers.
A third group hijacked a bus and used it to ram the gate at the National Guard base where they killed three servicemen before guards and police killed one attacker.
Aktobe, 100 kilometers from the Russian border, was the site of Kazakhstan”s first suicide bombing in 2011 when a local man detonated an explosive device inside the building of the state security service.
