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Anarchists Blamed for Burned Cars

A group of alleged anarchists attacked a parking lot near a premium-class apartment building in western Moscow early Thursday, pelting cars with bricks, chunks of metal and self-made firebombs, city police said.

No injuries were reported, but 10 cars sustained damage, RIA-Novosti reported, citing a law enforcement source.

There were nine attackers, all of whom managed to get away unharmed, another source told Interfax.

A photograph of the site, carried by the radical anarchist web site Black Blog, showed three burned-out cars. The vehicles were apparently regular middle-class sedans, not posh automobiles favored by the country's rich.

Police did not release names of car owners. The 30-story brick building near the parking lot has housing priced around $2 million for a three-room apartment, according to real estate web site Apartment.ru.

No one claimed responsibility for the attack. The unidentified authors of the Black Blog denied involvement, saying on their web site only that they condone the attack as long as it targeted "expensive cars bought with money taken from the people."

The Black Blog authors took credit earlier for a string of attacks on property starting in 2010. The latest incident Tuesday saw a traffic police precinct on the Moscow Ring Road bombed, though no one was hurt. The group was identified at the time as "Anarchist Guerrilla" after a subhead on the blog.

Police nevertheless suspected the blog's authors, the Interfax source said, adding that investigators have tracked the perpetrators and plan to arrest them "in the nearest future." He did not elaborate.

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