Russian police arrested two men yesterday suspected of involvement in a grenade attack in a central Moscow street which injured 16 people, most of them prostitutes, and thought to be a gangland vendetta.
Fifteen women and one man were injured at around 3.45 a.m. (6.45 a.m.) when "a person with Caucasian looks" hurled the grenade of some 200 grammes of TNT explosives in the city's Sukharevskaya square, ITARTASS reported.
The man, aged between 25 and 27, fled in a car from the square, one of many districts of the Russian capital frequented by pimps, prostitutes and their clients.
Two people were later detained in connection with the attack, police said. Earlier reports said five people had been arrested.
The injured were taken to nearby Sklifosovsky hospital, Moscow police chief Mr Mikhail Zabotkin said, and eight of them remained in hospital yesterday. "Their condition is not a cause for concern," he added.
The type of explosive device, a relatively small hand grenade, raised the possibility that the attack could be linked to organised crime fighting over control of prostitution, police said.
"The grenade was thrown from the other side of the street. We have found the pin. It was a not very powerful device," Mr Zabotkin told the private NTV television channel.
He cast doubt on any terrorist link to the affair, saying: "There is no reason to make such a connection. The nature of the crime and its victims, who were prostitutes for the most part, speaks for itself," he added.
But Russian media reported that other police sources, had said the blast might be linked to unrest in the north Caucasus where Russian forces have been seeking for almost a year to wipe out a Chechen rebel uprising.
Russia has been rocked by a series of bomb blasts and other emergencies in recent weeks. On Monday, three people were killed in a bomb attack at a market in Ryazan, 200 km miles south of Moscow.
On the same day, an explosive device hurled into a fashion boutique in St Petersburg destroyed property. Nobody was hurt in the incident.
On August 8th a bomb in a Moscow subway killed 12 people and injured more than 100.