Belarus Arrests Three after Blast at KGB

Belarus has arrested three people after a homemade bomb exploded outside the headquarters of the KGB security service in the northeastern city of Vitebsk, officials said on Monday.

The KGB said in a statement that the "primitive homemade pyrotechnic device" had gone off at 1548 GMT on Sunday evening, damaging two windows of the KGB building.

It said that based on witness testimony three people had been arrested, including one man with "external signs of deviant behavior" who had earlier telephoned the KGB and addressed its officers in "inappropriate terms".

The KGB only confirmed the blast on Monday even though rumors of the explosion and subsequent arrests had first surfaced on the Internet late on Sunday.

The explosion comes after Belarus strongman Alexander Lukashenko on Friday fired the head the KGB Vadim Zaitsev following the mysterious suicide of KGB Minsk region chief Alexander Kazak in a forest outside the capital.

Lukashenko and his security forces are still implementing an unprecedented crackdown on the opposition following the president's disputed victory in 2010 presidential elections.

Belarus is the only ex-Soviet republic to have kept the feared Committee for State Security (KGB) name for its security service after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991.