Over 4,000 Evacuated From Mall Near Moscow's Kremlin Due to Fake Bomb Threat

Russian law enforcement officers did not find any explosives at the Okhotny Ryad shopping mall in central Moscow after a bomb call on Sunday, a source in Moscow's emergency services told Sputnik.

Earlier in the day, some 4,000 people were evacuated from the Okhotny Ryad shopping mall in central Moscow after an anonymous bomb threat call.

Okhotny Ryad is located at Moscow's Manezhnaya square near the Kremlin.

Some 16,000 Evacuated Over 24 Hours Due to Bomb Threats in Russia

11 October 2017, 10:06 GMT

In autumn 2017, calls were received in 144 Russian cities, claiming bombs were planted in thousands of buildings, which resulted in the evacuation of more than 960,000 people. According to the law enforcement sources, some of the calls were made from abroad by persons associated with the terrorist group Daesh (ISIS).

The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) reported that the first days of calls alone incurred damages of over 300 million rubles (some $5.2 million). Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the situation "telephone terrorism," adding that all the necessary measures were being taken to find the perpetrators.

The underground shopping complex Okhotny Ryad had been the site of a terrorist attack years before: on August 31, 1999 a bomb detonated there, leaving one dead and 40 people injured. The attack was one in a series of bombings associated with the onset of the Second Chechen War.