FSB catches Islamic State group plotting to bomb city police in Russia

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A group of banned Islamic State (IS) members were detained in Pyatigorsk, Russia, for intending to carry out a bombing in the city's police department, according to Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) on Monday.

In its statement, the FSB said, "A terrorist attack was thwarted on the territory of the Stavropol region ... The criminal activity of a clandestine cell of supporters of international terrorist organization ISIS was exposed and suppressed in Pyatigorsk."

Citizens of Central Asian republics were identified as members of the group partaking in the plot, the statement said, adding that the detainees confessed.

During the search raid, bomb components, assembly diagrams, and symbols of the Islamic State were seized. 

IS activity and terrorist attacks have been on the rise in Russia recently, in light of the war in Ukraine. 

In August, the FSB detained eight militants planning attacks in Krasnoyarsk, Moscow, and Novosibirsk, who were also immigrants from Central Asia, belonging to the terrorist group "Unification and Jihad Brigade".

Security officials stated that these detainees were recruiting new members in order to organize them and send them to areas of armed conflict, as well as financing terrorist groups in Syria and inciting them to commit terrorist-related crimes. The FSB said it had seized communication devices, electronic devices, and credit cards from the suspects.

That same month, the FSB announced it had apprehended an ISIS suicide bomber, who was planning a terrorist assault against a member of India's leadership elite.

"Russia's FSB identified and detained a member of the Islamic State international terrorist organization banned in Russia, a native of a country in the Central Asian region, who planned to commit a terrorist act by blowing himself up against one of the representatives of the ruling circles of India," the authority said in a statement.

Not only so, but back in May of this year, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) accused the US of actively recruiting around 60 Islamic State members it has released from prisons to participate in hostilities in Ukraine as mercenaries.