MOSCOW, October 9. /TASS/. More than 950,000 people have been evacuated across Russia since September 11 after a wave of anonymous hoax bomb threats, law enforcement agencies told TASS on Monday.
"Between September 11 and October 9, in 144 cities the attacks of ‘phone terrorists’ targeted more than 2,300 facilities, including shopping centers, schools, stations, airports, cinemas, night clubs and state buildings. Over 950,000 people were evacuated," a source said.
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The law enforcement agencies checked each call. "All of them turned out to be a hoax," he said.
On Sunday, bomb alerts targeted 37 facilities in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yoshkar-Ola, Nizhny Novgorod and Dybenko (Leningrad region), according to the source.
The most massive attack by ‘phone terrorists’ was reported on Friday in Moscow when more than 250 buildings were hit by the wave of bomb alerts.
Director of the Federal Security Service (FSB) Alexander Bortnikov said earlier four Russians who used IP telephony for putting through false bomb threat calls in 50 regions of Russia had been identified. All of them are outside the country, but they have accomplices inside Russia. According to Bortnikov, the damage from the first several days of threat calls is estimated at 300 million rubles ($5.2 million).