MOSCOW, October 28. /TASS/. Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) apprehended more than 120 illegal gunsmiths in 39 Russian regions in a security operation carried out in August-September this year, the FSB press office reported on Monday.

"The Federal Security Service of Russia in interaction with the Interior Ministry of Russia and the Russian National Guard has thwarted the unlawful activity of 124 citizens from 39 regions of the country complicit in the illegal trade in weapons and the recovery of combat properties of civilian guns in underground workshops and their sale," the press office said in a statement.

FSB operatives have seized 333 firearms of domestic and foreign make, over 290 kg of explosives, 123 electric detonators and more than 633,000 cartridges of various caliber. They have busted the activity of 59 underground arms workshops and seized machineguns, assault rifles, submachine guns, revolvers, rifles, carbines, guns, grenade launchers, flamethrowers and mortars, it said.

The FSB carried out its security operation at the residences of underground gunsmiths in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Sevastopol, the Donetsk People’s Republic, the Republic of Altai, Buryatia, Ingushetia, Crimea, Yakutia, North Ossetia, Tatarstan, the Trans-Baikal, Primorye, Perm, Stavropol, Amur, Belgorod, Bryansk, Volgograd, Vologda, Voronezh, Zaporozhye, Irkutsk, Kaluga, Kemerovo, Kurgan, Moscow, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Orenburg, Penza, Pskov, Ryazan, Sakhalin, Smolensk, Tver, Tomsk, Tula, Ulyanovsk and Chelyabinsk Regions, it said.

"The efforts to uncover and foil the unlawful activity related to the illegal trade, production and re-making of guns continues," the FSB press office said.