MOSCOW, April 28 (RIA Novosti) - Terrorist attacks averted by Russia's security forces in the south of the country were ordered by networks in the Mideast and Central Asia, a senior security-service official said Friday.
"It has been established that funds for the organization of terrorist attacks were sent via a contact in the North Caucasus by customers from international terrorist centers in the Middle East and Central Asia," said Vladimir Bulavin, deputy director of the Federal Security Service (FSB) and chief of staff of the National Counter-Terrorism Committee.
Security forces said Thursday they destroyed a militant group in the North Caucasus republic of Karachayevo-Circassia who had allegedly been plotting a series of car bomb attacks on regional government buildings for May 9, a public holiday celebrating victory over Nazi Germany in the Second World War.
Bulavin said they had acted on intelligence information received by the National Counter-Terrorism Committee about a month ago.
He said one of the dead militants was a brother of a man who had masterminded bombings in Moscow's subway in February and September 2004.
According to the FSB, bomb ingredients including 30 kilograms (66 pounds) of aluminum powder and 50 kilograms (110 pounds) of potassium nitrate were found at the men's place, as well as detonators and other devices used to make explosives.
Bulavin praised the operation as the first serious achievement by the National Counter-Terrorism Committee, set up this past February.
Russia's troubled North Caucasus region has seen two major VE Day terrorist attacks in recent years. A stadium explosion in Chechnya's capital, Grozny, in 2004 killed the republic's president, Akhmad Kadyrov, and a blast during a parade in Daghestan two years earlier left 43 people dead.
