Russia’s Federal Security Service, the FSB, said on Wednesday that it had foiled an attempt by alleged Islamic State supporters to carry out a terror attack in a crowded place on the Far East Russian island of Sakhalin, which is an oil and gas hub.
Sakhalin is the site of many oil and gas operations and currently has Russia’s only LNG plant. Gazprom and Shell are the major partners in the Sakhalin-2 venture, with Gazprom holding 50 percent plus one share, and Shell owing 27.5 per cent minus one share in Sakhalin Energy Investment Company Ltd—the Sakhalin II project operator.
The Russian security service said today that they had detained two people—one citizen of a Central Asian republic and one Russian citizen—in the city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Sakhalin’s administrative center. During house searches, the FSB seized an improvised explosive device, components for making one, Islamic State propaganda material, and banned extremist literature. The cell phones of the two detainees contained instructions on how to make explosive devices, the security service said.
Criminal charges are brought against the detainees and investigation continues, the FSB said. Related: OPEC’s No.2 Plans Significant Raise In Crude Output Next Year
The latest news from the Russian security service comes less than a week after a gunman stormed into one of FSB’s regional offices in the Far East city of Khabarovsk, opened fire, and killed two people, including one FSB employee and a visitor. In that attack, there were contradictory reports about the motives of the attacker, with some saying that ISIS had claimed responsibility for the shooting, while others said that the attacker was a nationalist. FSB itself has said that the gunman is a native of the Khabarovsk region, and there was evidence that he belonged to a neo-Nazi group.
Yesterday, a group professing links to al Qaeda claimed that al Qaeda’s chief Ayman al-Zawahiri had ordered the suicide bombing in the St Petersburg metro in early April that killed 16 people, including the bomber.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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