Azernews.Az

ASTANA – A suicide bomber on Tuesday blew himself up outside the headquarters of the security service in Kazakhstan's northwestern city of Aktobe, wounding three people, officials said, AFP reported.

The mysterious bombing was a rare event in Kazakhstan, a majority Muslim country that prides itself on being the most stable nation in Central Asia and a hub for Western investment.

General prosecutors office spokesman Zhandos Umiraliyev told reporters in the capital Astana that the authorities had identified the bomber.

"It has been confirmed that the act was carried out by Rakhimzhan Makhatov. A criminal investigation has been opened," he said.

He played down claims that it may have been a "terrorist attack", saying the bomber suspected in several unspecified crimes detonated the bomb as a way to flee prosecution.

Asked if this was an act of terror, Umiraliyev said, "No, no."

Three people, including a member of the security services, were wounded, he said. The bomber was killed.

"A suicide bomber detonated an unknown device in front of the regional security services building. As a result of the explosion, there are casualties," a source within the security services told the Interfax news agency.

Despite the comments by the prosecutors' office, the trans-Atlantic security group the OSCE condemned the bombing as an act of terror.

"I strongly condemn this terrorist act," said Lithuanian Foreign Minister Audronius Azubalis, who currently holds the rotating chairmanship of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

"The OSCE and Lithuania do not accept terrorism in any form and make every effort to combat it," he said.

The incident shocked the city of Aktobe, a local newspaper journalist told AFP, who said the initial reports said there were as many as seven wounded.

The blast took place around 9:30 am (0530 GMT) outside the local headquarters of the Kazakhstan National Security Committee (KNB), the successor to the Soviet-era KGB.

News reports said security police were searching for alleged accomplices and had cordoned off a block of the city of 277,000 inhabitants.

According to local news site Tengiz News, the bomber was retaliating for recent arrests in Kazakhstan of Muslims who are followers of the fundamentalist Sunni branch of Islam known as Wahhabism.

However this theory had not been confirmed at the official level.

"As a member of an organised criminal group, the suspect committed the act with a goal to run from (criminal) responsibility," the prosecutor's spokesman said.

The size of western Europe, oil- and mineral-rich Kazakhstan has been spared from outbreaks of violence seen in neighbouring Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.

Kazakhstan has been run for the past two decades since even before the fall of the Soviet Union by strongman President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has given the country stability although critics complain about its democratic standards.

Nazarbayev has championed moderate Islam in the country which also includes a large Christian Russian minority and has regularly hosted conferences on tolerance of world religions.

Aktobe, in northwestern Kazakhstan, near the border with Russia, is home to a mixed Kazakh and Russian population.