Volgograd: visitors to six buildings and marketplace evacuated after bomb reports

Today, employees and visitors of a number of shopping and business centres, as well as the marketplace in Volgograd, were evacuated after receiving false reports that the facilities had been mined. The person who wrote about bombs explained his motives by Russia's participation in the Syrian conflict, the director general of the "Voroshilovsky" Shopping Centre said.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that in the beginning of 2019, people in a number of Russian regions were evacuated from schools, hospitals, shopping centres, markets, and office buildings after reports of bombs. After the checks, law enforcers reported that the information about bombs was not confirmed.

Today, the administrations of four shopping and entertainment centres, two business centres and the marketplace received messages about mining, Svetlana Smolianinova, the head of the information and public relations department of the GUVD (Chief Interior Department) for the Volgograd Region, told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent. According to her story, none of the messages was confirmed.

Overall, 1100 people were evacuated from the "Voroshilovsky" Shopping Centre, Nadezhda Vasilieva, its director, told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent, adding that the messages about the allegedly planted bombs came by e-mail. "It was written: 'You often receive messages about mining; and so far nothing has happened, but know that one day this will happen. 'What have peaceful residents of Russia have to do with this?' you may ask. 'But what have peaceful residents of Syria have to do with it?' we may ask. We are causing damage to Russia'," Ms Vasilieva quoted a fragment from the message. She noted that it was long, literally written. "While earlier messages were written illiterately, with phrase fragments; this time, there was a large message explaining why they do it," said the director of the shopping centre.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on May 7, 2019 at 06:36 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.