Moscow: 500-plus terror attacks foiled

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MOSCOW, Oct. 29 (UPI) -- Moscow says its anti-terrorism agents have foiled more than 500 terror attacks so far this year, Itar-Tass reported Friday.

Nikolai Patrushev, the nation's Federal Security Service chief, told members of the State Duma as Russia's parliament is known, that 200 of the more than 500 attacks averted were major ones.

Patrushev told the lawmakers that the terrorists who perpetrated September's Beslan massacre, in which about 350 people, many of them children, were killed, were taking amphetamines to remain alert during the crisis.

He also said Thursday that more than 80 suicide bombers have been trained abroad to carry out terrorist acts in Russia, and that the leaders of terrorists in the northern Caucasus region are Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov and al-Qaida.

He pointed out that militants and suicide attackers were trained with direct support from some countries in the Middle East and southwest Asia.

"The militants and suicide bombers are trained through undercover religious or military-religious organizations headquartered in a number of Eastern countries," Patrushev said.