Kazakhstan says it has broken up a network of Islamic militants linked to al Qaeda who trained suicide bombers and planned a "terrorist act" against a top official in neighbouring Uzbekistan. Some members of the group, calling itself Jamaat of Central Asian Mujahideen, participated in violent attacks on police and foreign embassies in Uzbekistan which claimed more than 50 lives earlier this year, the KNB security services said on Thursday. "We must face up to the fact that terrorist organisations and people with terrorist intentions are in Kazakhstan, living among us," Vladimir Bozhko, deputy head of the KNB -- a successor to the Soviet KGB, told a news conference. "Religious terrorism is a real threat to all of us."The KNB did not say exactly how many people it arrested, but said the detained militants included nine Kazakhs and four Uzbeks. It also detained four Kazakh women who had trained to be suicide bombers, Bozhko said. The KNB had evidence proving that those arrested planned to kill a top Uzbek official, he said but gave no details. Bozhko said the illegal group had been set up by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a group that targets the Uzbek government and has had links to al Qaeda in Afghanistan, according to security analysts. KNB operatives seized weapons, explosives, banned literature and cassettes with speeches by Osama bin Laden, he said. "Those arrested confessed that their future participation in acts of terrorism and suicide attacks had been explained to them by the need to fight the Uzbek authorities who allegedly oppress Muslims," the KNB said in a statement. "They also were told to fight 'enemies of Islam', including the United States, Britain and Israel."
The U.S. State Department last week warned U.S. citizens of possible terrorist attacks in Uzbekistan. During two years in Kazakhstan Jamaat recruited 50 Uzbeks and up to 20 Kazakhs, Bozhko said. Some of them were trained in al Qaeda's camps abroad, he said. KNB officers ran a video cassette for journalists, featuring a modestly dressed middle-aged woman. They said she was a mother of four who had been trained as a suicide bomber. "I address all Muslims and all the mujahideen still at large. Stop. Because we, ordinary Muslims and ordinary people are the ones to suffer," she said in Russian. "I am confident that there are still many deceived people like me."