Russia deployed extra troops to guard dozens of nuclear facilities across the country on Wednesday after militants seized a school in the south and a suicide bomb attack in Moscow, the Reuters news agency reported, citing Russia’s top nuclear authority.
Russia, the world’s No.2 atomic power after the United States, has come under international pressure to do more to protect its Soviet-era nuclear facilities against attack.
“After the latest terrorist attacks security services decided to send more interior ministry troops to all nuclear sites across the country,” a Russian Atomic Energy Agency spokesman said.
He would not say how many additional troops were sent.
He said the government extended the order right after militants seized a school near rebel Chechnya, taking up to 150 people hostage, and a Tuesday suicide bomb attack in central Moscow which killed at least nine people.
Russia runs dozens of atomic reactors, uranium enrichment facilities and nuclear research reactors —- some in the far-flung corners of Siberia and which are poorly guarded.
Reactors are also attractive to militants because atomic fuel stored at many sites can be used in nuclear bombs.
Seems to be an escalation in conflict between the Russians and the Muslims. What did you make of this? Is this timing due to events in Iraq? Or am I imagining the escalation?
UN poised to condemn Russia attacks Wed 1 September, 2004 17:20
Whether occurring in war, occupation or a terrorist attack anytime children are the victims the crime becomes even more dastardly. In this instance given the premeditation and number of children involved this is not only morally inapprehensible but a bad mistake on the part of the terrorists.
-Am
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council has called an emergency meeting, at the request of Russian Ambassador Andrei Denisov, to discuss a wave of deadly terrorist attacks in Russia.
The 15-nation council planned to convene at 5 p.m. (10:00 p.m. British time) on Wednesday and was expected to issue a statement at the meeting's close condemning the attacks as a threat to international peace and security, council diplomats said.
Russia is one of the council's five permanent members, along with the United States, Britain, France and China.
The call for a special session came after a heavily armed gang seized a school in southern Russia and took hostage up to 400 people, including many children, in what appeared to be a Chechen rebel operation.
A day earlier, a female suicide bomber blew herself up in central Moscow, killing 10 people and injuring 51. And on August 24, two passenger planes were downed, apparently by bombs, killing 90 people.
The request for a special Security Council meeting appeared unusual given Moscow's dogged insistence for years that its war in Chechnya was an internal problem which Russia would solve by itself.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was quoted by Tass as saying in Moscow that the wave of terrorist attacks "shows that the process of stabilization in Chechnya is not to the liking of international terrorists."
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