Novosibirsk FSB conducts exercise for capturing "terrorists" and freeing "hostages"

On Friday the Novosibirsk Federal Security Service (FSB) department finished command and staff exercises under the special "Signal" plan with elements of force actions for freeing hostages.

The exercise was held on August 3-9 in order to check the department's readiness for suppressing terrorist attacks on the railway, as RIA Novosti learned from the public relations group of the FSB department.

On August 3rd, the local FSB department received information from the South-Eastern FSB department that a group of terrorists would illegally cross the Kazakh-Russian border. They planned to penetrate Russia via roads, that were not controlled by frontier guards, on cars with Russian plates, or by trains Alma Ata - Novosibirsk. The terrorists were reported to be equipped with special means of communication, small arms, explosives and fake documents.

A few days later, a park attendant of a Siberian railway station during his round noticed two suspicious men who hurriedly disappeared. The railway security guards together with the Line interior department searched the park's territory and found an explosive device under one of the carriages. For its dismantling they summoned FSB sappers.

On the same day a sports bag with a self-made explosive device was found in the waiting room of the Novosibirsk Zapadny railway station and was neutralized by experts.

On Thursday the FSB detained a person, corresponding to the description of the bag's owner, on the Novosibirsk Glavny station.

The rest of the "terrorists" decided to capture a carriage of passenger train Moscow-Vladivostok.

The FSB negotiators contacted the "criminals" and informed them that the regional administration was ready to satisfy some of their demands, that is, to bring the carriage to the airport, to give them a bus and the demanded sum of money.

Yet the refusal of the "terrorists" to compromise caused the head of the operation to order forceful suppression of their actions, to conduct an operation for their capturing and setting "hostages" free. The seizure group of the FSB regional antiterrorist department together with other detachments captured the "offenders".