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Molotov cocktail bombs thrown at detention center in Minsk

Two unknown people have thrown two Molotov cocktail bombs at the door of the detention center on Akrestsina Street in Minsk early on Monday, BelaPAN reports.

The door caught fire as a result of the attack at 04:23 a.m.

The city’s Maskowski district police department instituted criminal proceedings under Part Two of the Criminal Code’s Article 339 that penalizes malicious hooliganism.

It was not immediately known whether anyone was grabbed in connection with the incident. The press office of the city police department would not comment the report.

An anarchist group named Friends of Freedom claimed responsibility for the attack, saying in a statement posted on the Internet in the evening that they wanted to show solidarity with six anarchist activists arrested at the end of last week on suspicion of involvement in the August 30 fire-bomb attack on the Russian embassy in Minsk.

The six young men were arrested after an anarchist group claimed responsibility for the attack on the Russian embassy, in which a diplomat’s Mazda 3 car was burned after two glass bottles containing a flammable substance were hurled into the embassy's territory at about 10 p.m. on August 30.

The group said that the attack was in response to the Russian authorities' crackdown on activists protesting plans to build a new Moscow-St. Petersburg highway through a forest north of the Russian capital city.