A residential building in St. Petersburg was evacuated after an explosive device was found in one of the apartments, a city official said, adding that the device was later defused and police had made several arrests.
“An explosive device has been located and disarmed,” Konstantin Serov, head of the administration of the district where the device was located, told TASS.
Earlier Russian media reported that a nine-story residential building in St. Petersburg had been evacuated after a suspicious object was found in one of the apartments.
All residents of the building were brought to safety and sheltered in a nearby kindergarten, TASS added.
Investigators are still working in the building, Serov added.
According to Serov, the owners of the apartment were absent when the searches were conducted. The men who were found there will be investigated by police, he added.
“At about 6am I heard a loud noise on the stairs… Then I saw police taking people out of the apartment next door. Then at about 8 o’clock our building was evacuated,” a local witness told Interfax.
When asked for comment by Ruptly, the Russian National Anti-Terrorist Committee said it could not confirm that the discovered object was indeed an explosive device. It did confirm that operatives are working at the scene.
Several people have been detained after an explosive device was found in the building, RIA Novosti reported, citing Serov.
“The danger has past. The device has been defused, the bad guys [sic] have been detained. Investigations are being conducted on the site,” Serov told Interfax, adding that residents can now return to their apartments.
St. Petersburg was shaken by a fatal explosion on Monday when an improvised bomb went off in subway train carriage between Tekhnologichesky Institut and Sennaya Ploshchad stations. Another bomb disguised as a fire extinguisher was defused by a bomb squad at Ploshchad Vosstaniya station.
The suspect was later identified as the 22-year old Akbarzhon Dzhalilov, a Russian citizen of Kyrgyz origin. Russia’s State Investigative Committee is treating the incident as a terrorist attack.