Explosives rumor rumbles neighborhood in Atyrau

By Murat SULTANGALIYEV

February 13, 19.00, Atyrau. Police, fire brigades and internal troops blocked the road between Atyrau international airport and a newly built Bolashak residential quarter.

Dwellers of the place called us telling that police special units had cordoned off the sector and asked people not to come out due to a special operation in process.

When we arrived in Bolashak, we discovered that only one of the roads leading to the quarter was closed.

Police had set a tight cordon around the blocks and people were kept from going to a bare place between the airport road and the quarter.

We spotted dog specialists trying to pick up the trails behind the buildings.

According to the locals, police found explosives.

Our source in police confirmed the information. So did a police officer in the cordon.

Goulnazira Moukhtarova, the head of police media service, failed to confirm the chats about a bomb, claiming it was just a reid.

At the same time, a group of local people approached the quarter's boiler room to complain about a hot and cold water supply outage.

On February 14, Ms Moukhtarova, officially declared that police had received a call informing about a black case discovered in the quarters. Bomb technicians and special forces took the suspicious case to the bare place behind the buildings in order to open and see what is inside.

And it was empty.