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Russian authorities have found explosives during a raid of a residential building in St Petersburg, while a loud explosion was later heard in a block nearby, security sources and witnesses say.
Key points:
- Explosives said to be similar to those used by a suicide bomber this week
- Investigators detain several people
- Residents evacuated from building where explosives found
No one was hurt in the explosion but a vehicle was damaged by falling masonry, news agency RIA said, citing a source in Russia's Emergencies Ministry.
The discovery of the explosives, which were similar to those used by a suicide bomber who this week blew up a metro carriage killing 14 people, raises the possibility that a string of bomb attacks was being planned in the city involving a group of plotters.
Security officials detained several people, according to a neighbour who saw the detentions taking place.
Russian investigators said they had detained several suspected accomplices of Akbarzhon Jalilov, born in mainly Muslim Kyrgyzstan, who is the suspected bomber in Monday's metro blast.
It was not immediately clear if the suspected accomplices were the same people detained at the apartment building.
Security officials searching the apartment complex where the men were detained also found an explosive device there.
Bomb disposal experts made the device safe after evacuating people living in apartments on two stairwells.
"We were told: the house is mined, get out quickly," said one woman, who only gave her name as Tatiana and lives in the building.
Another resident, who gave his name only as Anatoly, said he had seen police detain four young men occupying an eighth floor apartment next to his own.
Vasily, another neighbour, said that "many people" had lived in the apartment and the detainees looked to be about 30.
Explosives 'exactly like' unexploded bomb found at metro
The two security sources said that the explosives discovered at the building, in the east of the city, bore similarities to a bomb which was found on Monday inside a fire extinguisher at St Petersburg's Ploshchad Vosstaniya metro station.
That bomb did not detonate. State investigators said they believed the device had been left at Ploshchad Vosstaniya by Jalilov before he went on to another part of the subway network and detonated another bomb he was carrying.
One of the security sources said the explosives found in the apartment building on Thursday was "was exactly like" the unexploded bomb found at the metro station.
A second security source said that the quantities of explosives at the apartment and in the unexploded bomb were similar.
Russia is still reeling after the Monday attack which took place on the day Russian President Vladimir Putin was visiting St Petersburg, his home city.
Russia's state investigative committee, a body with sweeping powers that is looking into the bomber's background, said in a statement it was looking into the backgrounds of people it suspected of being accomplices.
It said it had identified several people of central Asian origin who had been in touch with Akbarzhon Jalilov, the main suspect.
A search of the suspects' homes had turned up objects that were important for the investigation, it said.
Reuters
Topics: crime, terrorism, russian-federation