TBILISI (Reuters) – Armenia’s National Security Service (NSS) said on Thursday it had arrested five suspects over what it said was a foiled “terror attack” aimed at government institutions, Armenian state news agency Armenpress reported.
Armenpress cited the NSS as saying in a statement that the five suspects, alongside unidentified accomplices, had planned a bombing attack, assassinations and to seize government buildings.
According to Armenpress, investigators seized weapons and ammunition in in the homes of the detainees. The report did not give a motive for the alleged plot.
Armenia’s government under Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has faced calls from critics to step down since neighbouring Azerbaijan overran the ethnic Armenian separatist authorities of Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian-backed breakaway region in September.
Azerbaijan’s takeover of Karabakh prompted a mass exodus of almost all of the territory’s 120,000 ethnic Armenians, and protests in Yerevan demanding Pashinyan’s resignation.
(Reporting by Felix Light; Editing by Andrew Osborn)
