At Least 23 Killed in Another Moscow Blast

An explosion demolished a nine-story apartment building in southern Moscow early today, killing at least 23 people in what officials said appeared to be a continuing campaign of terror in the Russian capital.

Dozens of rescuers worked by hand atop a huge pile of smoking rubble to remove chunks of the building in a desperate search for survivors. With about 72 apartments, the building housed at least 126 people, and the chances that many survived were slim.

Officials said the nature of the devastation led them to believe that the blast was not an accident.

“There is a very high probability that this is a terrorist act,” said a high-ranking official of the Federal Security Service. “The building is completely demolished, and it’s clear to us it was the work of professionals.”

The blast struck shortly after 5 a.m. on what had been declared a national day of mourning for the victims of three earlier bombing attacks that have killed at least 157 people in Moscow and the southern republic of Dagestan since Aug. 31.

Some officials have linked the bombings to Russia’s escalating war in Dagestan against Islamic rebels who have invaded the republic from neighboring Chechnya and hope to establish an independent Islamic state.

At least 92 people died in an explosion at midnight Wednesday that destroyed 72 apartments in a building less than four miles from Monday’s blast. Investigators said they found explosives and a detonator at the scene, and Moscow Mayor Yuri M. Luzhkov labeled that blast a “terrorist act.”

On Sept. 3, a bomb destroyed an apartment building housing military families at a closed compound in the Dagestani city of Buynaksk. That explosion killed 64.

The wave of attacks began Aug. 31 when a bomb went off in a crowded shopping mall next to the Kremlin, killing one and injuring 40.

Alexander A. Zdanovich, chief spokesman for the Federal Security Service, said the explosion appeared to follow the same pattern as the most recent Moscow blast. In both cases, he said, the perpetrators had rented space on the ground floor of the buildings and planted explosives there.

“Already now we can say that yet another terrorist act has been committed here,” he said.

Zdanovich appealed for help from the public in tracking down the criminals and preventing future bombings. “The measures being taken by law enforcement bodies alone are not enough because a real terrorist war is being waged here.”

Moscow police said they too believe that the bombing was carried out by the same group involved in the previous Moscow apartment blast. Police pledged to heighten security throughout the city.

The predawn explosion on Kashirskoy Avenue today created a huge cloud of dust and damaged at least one neighboring building.

The first rescuers on the scene pulled two people from the wreckage and have found two others, officials said. Rescuers could hear the voices of other survivors in the rubble, and trained dogs were helping to find them.

“We hope that some residents were at their dachas or somewhere else,” Sergei K. Shoigu, minister of emergency situations, told NTV television. “Only some inhuman monsters were capable of doing this.”

*

Alexei V. Kuznetsov of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.