DHAKA: Russia’s interior ministry said Wednesday its agents had detained 14 radical Islamists in Moscow who belonged to a banned offshoot of the Al-Qaeda terror network.

The ministry said members of Takfir wal-Hijra, a group formed in Egypt in the 1960s and outlawed in Russia in 2010, had been discovered hiding weapons and explosives in their apartments but provided few other details.

It said the group had been funding its activities by ‘conducting general crime’, reports TDS.

Takfir wal-Hijra was quashed in Egypt in the 1970s but is believed to have cells linked to Al-Qaeda in several European and other countries.

Russia remains on heightened alert ahead of the February 7-23 Winter Olympic Games in the Black Sea resort of Sochi that lies near the volatile North Caucasus region.

A top guerrilla commander in the North Caucasus who has claimed responsibility for a string of deadly suicide bombings in Moscow has threatened to target the Sochi Games.

BDST: 1430 HRS, NOV 27, 2013