BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) – Police in Moldova’s separatist region of Transnistria, where Russia has troops stationed, say several explosions believed to have come from rocket-propelled grenades hit the building of the Ministry of State Security on Monday.
No casualties were immediately reported in the alleged attack, which took place in the city of Tiraspol on Orthodox Easter Monday, when the building was believed to be emptier than usual. The separatist Interior Ministry said on Facebook that some of the building’s windows were broken and that smoke was coming out of the building.
Transnistria, a strip of land with about 470,000 people between Moldova and Ukraine, has been under the control of separatist authorities since a war with Moldova in 1992. Russia has about 1,500 troops there and calls them peacekeepers, but there are grave fears these troops could be used to attack Ukraine from the west.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the incident.
Moldova’s Office for Reintegration Policy said it was “concerned” about the incident.
“The aim of today’s incident is to create pretexts to strain the security situation in the Transnistria region, which is not controlled by the constitutional authorities,” Moldova’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
A senior Russian military official, Rustam Minnekayev, said last week that Russian forces are aiming to take complete control of southern Ukraine and said such a move would also open a land corridor to Transnistria.
The United States has previously warned that Russian forces could launch “false flag” operations to create a pretext for invading other nations’ territory. Russian officials have denied such allegations.
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