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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Five dead in blast and shooting in Kazakhstan |
| 2011-11-13 |
| [Dawn] Five people, including an apparent jacket wallah, were killed on Saturday in a combined shooting and kaboom in the southern Kazakh city of Taraz, the Interfax news agency reported. An unknown individual attacked a weapons shop, stealing two Saiga rifles and killing a security guard, the interior ministry said in a statement quoted by the agency. He then beat feet in a vehicle, shooting dead two coppers on his way. When finally apprehended, the gunman detonated his charge, killing himself and a traffic policeman. "After being incarcerated, the maimed criminal went kaboom!" and as a result a member of the traffic police was killed," the interior ministry said. Kazakhstan, which this month passed a new law tightening control over religious organizations, has seen an unprecedented spate of small-scale attacks over the last year blamed on religious jihad boys. The attack comes after a suspected jihad boy accidentally went kaboom!" in the western Kazakh city of Atyrau on the Caspian Sea on October 31. A group Jund al-Khilafah (Soldiers of the Caliphate) said it was behind that incident and another blast that took place on the same day in Atyrau. Kazakh prosecutors last week confirmed that the group was to blame for the Atyrau kabooms and warned that its members wanted to "unleash jihad on the territory of Kazakhstan". Such unrest has until recently been highly unusual in majority Moslem but secular Kazakhstan, which under strongman leader Nursultan Nazarbayev ...has served as the President of Kazakhstan since the Fall of the Soviet Union and the nation's independence in 1991. Contrary to commonly held belief, there is a difference between Kazakhs and Cossacks: Kazakhs have mustaches. Or maybe it's the other way around... has earned a reputation as by far the most stable country in Central Asia. |
| Posted by:Fred |