Suspected militants targeted this week in a deadly raid outside Moscow as they purportedly plotted an attack on the city received training in the troublesome border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan, law enforcement said Tuesday an allegation that experts called a reminder of the threat posed by Russian radicals coached and sometimes financed from abroad.
Special forces officers killed two men and detained a third in Orekhovo-Zuyevo, about 80 kilometers from Moscow, in the raid Monday, the National Anti-Terrorism Committee said.
The officers came under fire when they surrounded a house where the suspects were staying and demanded that they surrender. In the ensuing firefight, the officers shot and killed two of the suspects, and captured another, the committee said.
One special forces officer suffered a light wound. There were no civilian casualties.
"The decisive actions of law enforcement agencies foiled an effort to commit a terror attack in the capital," the committee said in a statement late Monday.
The suspects are Russian citizens who returned from Afghanistan or Pakistan, where they received battle training and prepared to carry out terror attacks, the statement said.
The Federal Security Service briefed President Vladimir Putin about the operation and kept him updated about its progress, his spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
A law enforcement source told Interfax that the men were planning to strike a large-scale public gathering in Moscow. Security officers acted on intelligence data, the source added.
Police discovered a Kalashnikov assault rifle and 25 rounds of ammunition in their home, Interfax said.
Another law enforcement source told Interfax that the men had lived in Pakistan and practiced Islam.
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