The sole survivor of a tragedy at a Kazakh border post with China which left 14 guards dead has confessed to murdering his fellow servicemen, the Interfax news agency reported Wednesday, quoting an official source. On Tuesday, Kazakh authorities had detained the 15th guard, who was believed to have been on duty at the border post high in the Tian Shan mountains and had previously been unaccounted for. Officials said the survivor — named as Vladislav Chelakh — was in bad psychological condition and in a “stupor.” “Chelakh made a confession. He took the blame,” a source in the Almaty region where the remote border post is located told the Interfax news agency. Contacted by AFP, a spokesman for the guard service declined to either confirm or deny the report. The bodies were found last week in the burned-out wreckage of the Argkankergen border control post in the mountains outside Kazakhstan’s biggest city Almaty. Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev had earlier described the deaths of the border guards as well as a local hunter as an “act of terror”, but details on the tragedy have remained shrouded in uncertainty. In another report however, a government source told Interfax it was too early for any conclusions as the authorities were examining various possible scenarios. “We are hoping he will shed the light on all these questions,” the source was quoted as saying, referring to Chelakh. “All his testimony is being verified…. It is too early to draw a conclusion.”
