Seven Killed in Kazakhstan Attacks

Seven people were killed on Saturday in the southern Kazakh city of Taraz when a suspected Islamist went on shooting rampage and then blew himself up, officials said.

Kazakhstan's deputy prosecutor Nurmukhanbet Isayev said "a follower of jihadism carried out a series of especially grave crimes which led to the death of seven people, including five members of the security forces."

He said the man was named Kariyev and born in 1977, the Interfax-Kazakhstan news agency reported.

The interior ministry said earlier the man attacked a weapons store in Taraz, stole two Saiga rifles and killed a security guard.

He then escaped in a vehicle, shooting dead two police officers as he tried to flee. When finally apprehended, the gunman detonated his charge, killing himself and a traffic policeman.

"After being arrested, the wounded criminal blew himself up and as a result a member of the traffic police was killed," the interior ministry said. Prosecutors have not yet explained how they arrived at the new toll.

Kazakhstan, which this month passed a new law tightening control over religious organizations, has seen an unprecedented spate of small-scale attacks over the last year blamed on Islamist extremists.

The attack comes after a suspected extremist accidentally blew himself up in the western Kazakh city of Atyrau on the Caspian Sea on October 31.

An Islamist group called Jund al-Khilafah (Soldiers of the Caliphate) said it was behind that incident and another blast that took place on the same day in Atyrau.

Kazakh prosecutors last week confirmed that the group was to blame for the Atyrau explosions and warned that its members wanted to "unleash jihad on the territory of Kazakhstan".

Such unrest has until recently been highly unusual in majority Muslim but secular Kazakhstan, which under strongman leader Nursultan Nazarbayev has earned a reputation as by far the most stable country in Central Asia.

The three Kazakh citizens who founded founders of Soldiers of the Caliphate are hiding on the porous Afghan-Pakistan border and participating in attacks "on the side of international terrorists", a spokesman for Kazakhstan's prosecutor has said.

The Atyrau blasts followed a warning from the group over the new Kazakh ban on religious ceremonies in state institutions and a requirement that religious groups and missionaries re-register with the government of the ex-Soviet state.

The GKNB state security service in neighboring Kyrgyzstan, just to the south of Taraz, said they were ready to tighten border security if the situation in Taraz worsened.

"We will strengthen security measures if the situation in Taraz is not regularized. The most recent events in Kazakhstan show that no-one is immune to terrorism and extremism," said GKNB chief Keneshbek Dushebayev.

Around 70 percent of Kazakhstan's 16.5 million people are Muslims and Kazakh authorities have repeatedly expressed concern about Muslim extremism sweeping in from other Central Asian states and Afghanistan.

But critics warn that the new law -- signed last month by Nazarbayev -- could have the opposite effect by increasing the militancy of banned religious groups.