Jihadists planned to blow up a police station in the Russian capital, the security agency has said
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has said that its operatives have prevented a terrorist attack prepared in Moscow by members of the jihadist group ISIS-K, the Afghan branch of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).
The suspects resisted arrest and were eliminated during a shootout with officers, the security agency said in a statement on Friday.
According to the FSB, the members of the ISIS-K (also known as Islamic State – Khorasan, or Wilayat Khorasan) cell, comprised of individuals from Central Asian countries, were planning to blow up a police station in the Russian capital.
The FSB said its attention was drawn to the suspects, who had sworn allegiance to IS, when they began collecting information about the facility that they had chosen as their target.
The jihadists had acquired a vehicle, loaded it with propane tanks, and began assembling an improvised explosive device in order to carry out the attack, it said.
According to the agency, a search of the suspects’ residence uncovered firearms, ammunition and components for making a bomb.
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The FSB also published a video that showed the operatives breaking into an apartment in a multi-story building. The clip contained images of a car with propane tanks in the trunk and pictures of the suspects posing with an IS flag.
ISIS-K had taken responsibility for the attack in March on Crocus City Hall concert venue just outside Moscow. In that attack, more than 140 people were killed and over 550 injured as four gunmen stormed the facility and shot everyone in sight before setting the building on fire.
Several months later, FSB chief Aleksandr Bortnikov said that, according to Moscow’s data, Ukrainian intelligence had been “directly involved” in the Crocus City Hall terrorist act.
Kiev denied having anything to do with the attack on the concert venue. However, the FSB’s Bortnikov insisted the Ukrainians merely used the jihadists as proxies. Upon completion of the crime, “the terrorists received a clear command to move to the Ukrainian border, where a ‘window’ had been prepared for them,” he said.