STAVROPOL. Jan 14 (Interfax) - A total of four explosive devices had been planted near the cars in which six bodies were earlier found in two districts of the Stavropol territory, and one of these explosive devices went off, a high-ranking investigation official said.
"A total of four explosive devices were detected near the cars with corpses, and one of them went off. It was equivalent in its power to about 200 grams of TNT. The other three explosive devices were defused," Yury Lyashenko, the chief of the special investigations division at the Investigative Committee department for the Stavropol territory, told journalists on Tuesday.
A number of expert studies have been ordered to combine the criminal cases opened earlier into the incidents into one, he said.
It was reported earlier that four VAZ cars with six bodies bearing gunshot wounds had been found in two communities of the Kirovsky and Predgorny districts of the Stavropol territory between 0:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. Moscow time on January 8. An improvised explosive device went off later near one of these cars, but no one was harmed.
Counterterrorist operation regulations have been in effect in the villages of Etoka and Pyatigorsky in the Predgorny district and in Zolskaya, Maryinskaya, and Staropavlovskaya in the Kirovsky district since January 9.