The mystery deaths of 14 Kazakh borderguards and a huntsman in a fire at a mountainous border post near China appears to have been an “act of terror”, President Nursultan Nazarbayev said on Friday.
The fifteen bodies were found Thursday in the burned-out wreckage of the Argkankergen border control post in the Tian Shan mountain range outside Kazakhstan’s biggest city Almaty, the national security council said.
It said that the bodies of two more guards were found, raising an earlier toll of 13.
“I believe this to have been an act of terror. Likely it happened as a result of internal conflicts. But it is too early to talk about this,” Nazarbayev told security chiefs in the capital Astana. “When such incidents take place in peace time it requires very thorough investigation,” he added, in comments released by the presidency.
He gave no further indication over who he thought was behind the act or what “internal conflicts” he was referring to. It is also not clear what the huntsman was doing at the border post.