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A picture of Sherlock Holmes lying outside a demolished Rechnik house.
Vitaly Nikitin, head of Moscow's Krylatsky district, urged the residents to take advantage of the decision to suspend demolition work.
"The decision was made in connection with eight petitions filed to the district's administration by Rechnik residents who asked for time to move out of the property," Nikitin said at the site in televised remarks.
City authorities started demolishing houses Thursday after several years of bitter conflict with the residents of the Rechnik and Ogorodnik communities, who over the past decade have built sizable homes in a scenic park along the Moscow River. City authorities say construction in the environmentally protected area is illegal.
The conflict has drawn the attention of opposition leaders and human rights activists, who denounced the city's methods as harsh.
At least six Rechnik houses had been demolished by Monday.
Rechnik will be transformed into a city park and nothing else, Moscow city environmental chief Leonid Bochin said in an interview with Rossiiskaya Gazeta published Monday. He denied speculation that the land, whose current residents reportedly include lawmakers, governors, war veterans and celebrities, would be turned into a golf course.
The next neighborhood to face demolition will be the nearby luxury Ostrov Fantazy community, Bochin said. He said its residents all had the required ownership papers, but that the papers could not be valid.
"The documents were received illegally because the land was designated for a sports center," Bochin said, without elaborating who was responsible for the alleged fraud.
Ostrov Fantazy's web site says rental rates for its houses range from $500 to $900 per square meter per year. In other words, a 100-square-meter house would cost at least $4,166 per month.
Meanwhile, Rechnik residents assembled Monday to defend their houses and sign an appeal to President Dmitry Medvedev. The appeal says the residents occupied the land legally half a century ago and some of them have filed complaints to the European Court of Human Rights.
The Rechnik settlement was founded in 1955 by workers of the Moscow Canal.
City Hall said it would not pay damages to the evicted residents.
Nikitin promised that demolition work would resume in a few days.
(Click here for a photo essay of Rechnik by Vladimir Filonov.)
