Russian authorities claimed to have foiled a terrorist plot to attack a chemical weapons storage facility that could have caused "hundreds of deaths," state media reported.
Russia's Investigative Committee said in a statement on Tuesday that two men, aged 19 and 21, were detained on suspicion of planning the attack.
It said the men from the country's restive North Caucasus region had been planning since last month to bomb a building in the central Kirov Region used for the storage and disposal of chemical weapons.
"The action was planned in order to influence the decisions of the authorities and international organizations," the RIA Novosti news agency quoted investigators as saying.
The youths, described as followers of the Islamic Wahhabi sect, reportedly traveled from Moscow to the Kirov regional town of Kotelnich and occupied an abandoned house. Security officials who raided the building found "extremist literature" and "foreign passports" made out in the suspects' names, the statement said.
Security officials also discovered components for a home-made explosive device stashed at an abandoned building. One of the suspects had been accused of resisting Federal Security Service officers while trying to detain them. The statement did not say when the men had been detained or their names.
Russian security forces have been fighting an insurgency in the North Caucasus for almost two decades. Islamist rebels continue to carry out armed attacks across that region and occasionally in other parts of Russia.
The Kirov Region is one of several areas of the country housing chemical weapon destruction facilities for the thousands of tons of deadly gases that include the VX, Soman and Sarin nerve agents, the news agency said.
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