Information provided by local residents helped prevent terrorist act in Chechnya

Information provided by local residents helped prevent a terrorist act in a region of Chechnya, the Russian military reported Saturday.

According to the press service of the Joint Group of Forces in Chechnya, people in the village of Komsomolskoye in the Urus Martan region in the central part of the republic informed the Russian military that a suspicious person had been seen on the road two kilometers from the village. An operational group was immediately sent to that place. The man, about whom the villagers told the servicemen, had already planted an explosive device at the roadside. When the servicemen tried to detain him, he blew up the mine and made an effort to escape but was seized. No one suffered in the explosion.

According to the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), a powerful explosive device was defused on that day in the suburbs of the Chechen capital Grozny. FSB officers found in the outskirts of the Staraya Sunzha village in that region 200 TNT blasting cartridges, their total weight being 40 kg, and a detonator connected to them. The find was destroyed on the spot.