Kazakhstan said on Monday that foreign-trained Islamist radicals were among those who had attacked government buildings and security forces last week and that police had now detained almost 8,000 people to bring the situation under control. Government buildings in several cities were briefly captured or torched last week as initially peaceful protests against fuel price increases became violent in the worst bout of violence in the Central Asian nation’s post-Soviet history. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev sacked his cabinet, issued shoot-to-kill orders and declared a state of emergency in the oil-rich nation of 19 million. He also asked a Russian-led military bloc to send in troops, who the government says have since been deployed to guard strategic objects. Tokayev was set to take part in a video conference of the bloc’s leaders on Monday. Authorities on Monday for the first time linked the violence to what they said were members of Islamist groups. Kazakhstan says 164 people, including two children, killed during unrest “As the events in Almaty and several other regions of the country have shown, Kazakhstan has been subjected to armed aggression by well-coordinated terrorist groups trained abroad,” the foreign ministry said in a statement. “According to preliminary data, the attackers include individuals who have military combat zone experience in the ranks of radical Islamist groups.” It did not name any specific groups. The National Security Committee said on Monday, an official day of mourning, that the situation had stabilised and that security forces had restored control. Karim Masimov, the committee’s former head, was detained on suspicion of treason last week, days after Tokayev dismissed him. Russian and state media, citing a government social media post, have reported that 164 people had been killed . Health and police authorities did not confirm that figure, and the original social media post has been deleted. I think there was some kind of a conspiracy involving domestic and certain foreign destructive forces,” Secretary of State Yerlan Karin told state television on Monday, without naming any suspects. A former Kazakh prime minister said on Sunday that Tokayev must move fast to consolidate his grip after appearing to break with Nursultan Nazarbayev, his powerful predecessor. Kazakhstan arrests former security chief after protests Kazakhstan has framed the violence in Almaty as an attack by “terrorist groups” and expressed displeasure at foreign media coverage of the events. On Monday the government said foreign media reports had created “the false impression that the Kazakhstan government has been targeting peaceful protesters”. “Our security forces have been engaging with violent mobs who were committing brazen acts of terror,” the foreign ministry said in the statement. Officials previously said 26 “armed criminals” had been killed and that 16 security officers had died. Nur-Sultan, the city that replaced Almaty as capital in 1997 and was renamed in honour of 81-year-old founding president Nursultan Nazarbayev in 2019, saw comparatively little unrest. The crisis comes with tensions between Moscow and the West at post-Cold War highs over fears of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, with talks between Russia and the US to take place in Geneva on Monday after a working dinner on Sunday evening. Russia has ruled out any concessions at the talks. Tokayev, the Ukrainian president, has thanked the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation for answering his request for help and sending a detachment of 2,500 troops to the country. Tokayev says the deployment will be temporary, but US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned on Friday that “once Russians are in your house, it’s sometimes very difficult to get them to leave”. Kazakhstan’s unrest is a distraction China does not need While the precise contours of the political crisis that engulfed Kazakhstan are unclear, it is evident that the ruling elite has been roiled. Nazarbayev, who was widely regarded as holding the strings in the oil-rich Central Asian country despite stepping down from the presidency in 2019, has not spoken in public since the crisis began. Nazarbayev’s press secretary said on Twitter on Saturday that Nazarbayev was in “direct contact” with Tokayev and called on Kazakhs to “rally around” the president. Nazarbayev hand-picked Tokayev as his successor after calling time on more than a quarter-century as head of state. Tokayev’s spokesman said on Sunday that he was “taking decisions independently … not running to consultants”. Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse