MOSCOW. March 12 (Interfax) - Four gang members were killed and another eight were detained during a counter-terrorism operation in the Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria in Russia's North Caucasus, the National Anti-terrorist Committee (NAC) said in a press release seen by Interfax on Tuesday.
"Eight members of armed groups were detained. Three automatic weapons, ammunition, an explosive device equivalent to over five kilograms of TNT (it was disposed of on the spot), a grenade launcher, TNT blocks, a pistol and packages containing heroin and marijuana were confiscated from their cars and a number of searched sites," it said.
Four gang members were killed in a shootout with police.
"A laboratory where gangs made explosive devices was found in the basement of a house surrounded during the operation in Baksan. Several ready-to-use bombs and multiple components for them were confiscated from it," the committee said.
The gang members killed in Baksan were tentatively identified as "A. Tleuzhev, born in 1976, a man with a previous criminal record who arranged ammunition supplies, Kh. Makoyev, born in 1975, the "financier" of the so-called Baksan gang, A. Dzagashtov, born in 1976, and A. Mamreshev, born in 1979," it said.
These men "both supplied gangs with weapons and ammunition and personally took part in crimes to extort money from entrepreneurs," the committee said.
"The NAC Information Center announces that the neutralization of this criminal group, which supplied weapons to gangs, delivered a serious blow to terrorists operating in the North Caucasus," it said.
The Federal Security Service and other agencies launched an operation in Kabardino-Balkaria and Ingushetia on March 11 aimed at dismantling a criminal group suspected of supplying weapons to gangs active in this region, it said.
A Kalashnikov assault rifle, a two-handed weapon, an Italian-made pistol and a thermal imaging device were confiscated from the houses of several suspects in a number of villages of Ingushetia's Malgobek district, the committee said.