ASTANA (TCA) — At the meeting of Kazakhstan’s Security Council last Friday, President Nursultan Nazarbayev described the June 5 attacks in the Kazakh city of Aktobe senseless and cruel and said that the Salafi movement was responsible for them.
“It was a terrorist attack of a group of followers of the non-traditional religious movement of Salafism. While ensuring the freedom of faith, we at the same time are resolved to decisively repulse all those that are trying to rock the situation in the country under the pretext of religious slogans,” the President’s press service quoted Nazarbayev as saying.
The President ordered the Government within two months to draft a package of legislative initiatives aimed at countering terrorism and extremism, arms possession and sale, and regulating migration and religious organizations.
The Government was also tasked to submit proposals on introduction of monitoring of foreign funding of Kazakh citizens and organizations.
Nazarbayev last week said that the terrorists who carried out the recent attacks in the northwestern Kazakh city of Aktobe “received instructions from abroad”.
Dozens of gunmen carried out the attacks in Aktobe on June 5, prompting a counterterrorism operation and leaving a growing death toll of more than 20 dead, including attackers.
In his statement on June 8, Nazarbayev said that “the terrorist act was organized by adherents to radical pseudo-religious movements” and “they received instructions from abroad”.
“We all know that the so-called ‘color revolutions’ have different methods and start from farfetched protest meetings, murders, and desire to seize power. Such signs have appeared in our country as well,” Nazarbayev said.
There have been no credible claims of responsibility for the Aktobe attacks, which targeted two gun shops and a National Guard base and have left the country in a state of high alert.
