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Court Authorizes Arrest of Moscow Region Terror Suspect

Local residents looking at the site of a shootout in the town of Orekhovo-Zuyevo on Tuesday. Mikhail Voskresensky

A Moscow court has sanctioned the arrest of the sole survivor of a raid by special forces officers on a suspected terror cell in the Moscow region.

On Monday, special forces officers raided a house in Orekhovo-Zuyevo, about 80 kilometers east of Moscow, shooting and killing two men suspected of plotting a terror attack in Moscow.

Officers detained a third, Robert Amirkhanov, who suffered number of fractures and received a gunshot wound during the raid, Interfax reported.

Moscow's Lefortovsky District Court sanctioned his arrest on Tuesday, with a spokesperson saying that his injuries wouldn't prevent him from being questioned by investigators.

Amirkhanov will be questioned about other terrorists who could still be planning attacks.

Amirkhanov and the two suspected accomplices had kept a low profile after renting the flat on Orekhovo-Zuyevo's Barishnikov Ulitsa in March, local residents told Reuters.

"We saw little of them. They were very quiet. But we heard a strange bang 10 days ago which was reported to police," said Irada Simakova, a 52-year-old pediatrician.

"I used to say hello to one of them who looked around 25. I'd see him going out to do the shopping but I never saw the other two," Oleg Smirnov, 49, who lived in a flat below the suspects, told the news agency.

"If I'd have known what they were doing, I'd have shot them myself," he said.

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