MINSK, 5 March (BelTA) – A new group armed with TNT and plastic explosives has been captured. Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko mentioned it while talking to workers of the Minsk-based bicycle and motorcycle manufacturing company Motovelo on 5 March, BelTA has learned.
Aleksandr Lukashenko said: “If I told you something else as well… The KGB will soon inform you how much TNT and plastic explosives has been smuggled into the country. Specialists know these things. It is not [Nikolai] Avtukhovich's group [a domestic terrorist cell, which operation has been recently suppressed by law enforcement agencies]. These are new people. It is good they have been locked up. They had lots of weapons. What for?”
During the Belarusian People's Congress KGB Chairman Ivan Tertel talked about the suppression of operation of terrorist groups in Belarus: “Some think that they will be able to shake up the country by shedding blood of the ordinary people whose interests they use as a cover. The operation of terrorist cells led by Avtukhovich and Olinevich is a case in point.”
In his words, members of these terrorist groups blew up and set on fire facilities of government agencies in Minsk Oblast, Grodno Oblast, and Gomel Oblast. They destroyed property owned by law enforcement and security officers. They set up caches with weapons and explosive devices near Minsk. The terrorist cells appeared virtually all over the country. Plans were made to take direct action against law enforcement officers and civil servants, the KGB chairman said. Ivan Tertel said he believes that mass casualties had been prevented only because these cells had been stopped early.
Ivan Tertel noted that according to the available data there are other terrorists at large. “We have reliable information about intentions of other people to commit acts of terroristic nature in the territory of our country. Let me stress it: they are ready for anything, they are ready to commit any crimes and have pity on neither women nor children,” the official said in his speech during the Belarusian People's Congress. The KGB is aware of plans of these people, including plans to find people to commit these acts, plans concerning their targets, including the country's leadership and members of the families, the criminal schemes in development, and sources of finance.
