A luxury car driven by a Moscow district police officer was damaged shortly before midnight Sunday by a bomb, possibly the latest in a string of attacks by militant anarchists.
The bomb went off near a police parking lot in the Vostochnoye Degunino district in the city's north, damaging the Toyota Land Cruiser Prada of local police deputy chief Eduard Zaitsev, RIA-Novosti said.
No injuries were reported, but the blast destroyed several windows in the nearby precinct building and damaged two more cars driven by local cops, an unidentified police official told Interfax. He did not identify the other cars or estimate the cost of the damage.
The bomb contained the equivalent of 50 to 100 grams of TNT, the official added.
Police have opened a criminal case into the attack on charges of hooliganism, which carry a maximum sentence of seven years in prison. No one has been detained in connection with the blast.
A police spokesman confirmed by telephone Monday that the blast took place, but refused to elaborate.
Zaitsev did not own the Toyota Land Cruiser Prada and had been driving it with permission from the owner, RIA-Novosti . It remained unclear who entrusted to him the car, which costs 1.7 million to 2.7 million rubles ($59,000 to $94,000).
The average salary of a police deputy head in Moscow is 40,000 to 45,000 rubles, according to Moscow police trade union chief Mikhail Pashkin.
Precinct officers Gazeta.ru that the incident was not linked to similar attacks by young radicals this summer, but the RIA-Novosti source said "informal youth groups and organizations are being investigated for links to the incident."
Anarchists have claimed responsibility for other attacks on police property in the last two weeks, including the bombing of a police station in northwestern Moscow late Friday and the torching of a police parking lot in the Moscow region town of Khimki last Tuesday.
In early July, an obscure group of anarchists, the Earth Liberation Front, responsibility on its blog, Blackblocg.info, for days earlier torching a police station, a luxury-car showroom, an upscale cottage and a bulldozer in Moscow and the surrounding region.
The earliest entries in the blog, which includes videos and photos of attacks, date back to May 2010.
Police spokeswoman Yelena Alexeyeva told The Moscow Times in July that investigators have been reviewing the web site's claims and found some, but not all, to be true.
No detentions have been reported in any attacks claimed by the anarchists.
This summer's spate of attacks also includes the torchings of a BMW and a Maserati in central Moscow last week; of five cars in separate incidents on the same day in early July; and of 10 luxury cars attacked with homemade bombs, bricks and screws in June. No one has taken credit for the attacks.
