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Bomb Scares Across Russia Cost Authorities More Than $5 Mln

Roman Pimenov / Interpress / TASS

Bomb scares that have plagued Moscow and a dozen provincial Russian cities since last Sunday continued on Monday.

Since Sept. 10, tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from public buildings across Russia in mass threats, which have led to confusion and copy-cat calls. The mass evacuations have cost authorities around 300 million rubles ($5.2 million) so far, the RBC outlet reports.

Some 600 people were forced to leave eight administrative buildings and a private office building in Moscow on Monday, Kommersant reported.

And police in the city of Vologda, about 465 kilometers northeast of Moscow, evacuated ten shopping malls and two movie theaters after anonymous phone calls began in the late afternoon, the regional outlet VologdaRegion.ru reported.

Authorities in the Chuvashia republic said that threatening robot calls were received at six shopping centers, four hotels, the city administration building and a district courthouse on Monday in the regional capital of Cheboksary.

Over the weekend, some 22,000 people were ordered to evacuate from shopping malls, movie theaters and clubs in St. Petersburg and other Russian towns.

Russia has been rocked by a series of small-scale attacks after a bomber detonated a homemade explosive in the St. Petersburg metro in April, killing 16 and wounding dozens.

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