RUSSIAN authorities ordered more than 1,000 extra interior ministry troops into Moscow yesterday after a bomb tore through a trolley bus in the morning rush hour the second such attack in two days.
The Moscow Health Department and the mayor's office said no one was killed in the latest blast but 28 people were injured.
The Prime Minister, Mr Viktor Chernomyrdin, said earlier that one of the victims had died, but a health department spokesman said he had been misled. Seven of the wounded were in serious condition and one critical.
President Yeltsin, re-elected nine days ago to four more years in office, called immediately for tough action against terrorism. He told state security officials that the city of nine million people was "infested with terrorists
Mr Chernomyrdin, addressing a state commission meeting, also promised that the toughest possible measures would be taken. "Terror, barbarity and baseness will not prevail," he said.
Moscow authorities announced a crackdown on those deemed undesirable in the city, particularly ethnic groups from the Caucasus region where the Chechnya conflict is raging.
Interior ministry troops commander Gen Anatoly Shkirko said he was drafting more than 1,000 extra men into the capital.
The bomb was a carbon copy of a blast on a trolley bus on Thursday closer to the city centre. Five people were injured in that attack.
Officials stressed yesterday that there was no hard evidence to tie the blasts to Chechen rebels. Kremlin troops have been bogged down in bitter fighting in Chechnya against separatists since December 1994.
In a separate incident yesterday, an administrative manager of Russia's CSKA (Central Army Sports Club) ice hockey team, Mr Vladimir Bogach, was killed by gunmen who shot at him from three cars in central Moscow, a spokesman for the club said.
The incidents have heightened tension in the capital, which is recovering from a bruising presidential election campaign in which law and order and the growing crime wave were top issues.
People's tempers are also frayed by a heat wave which has driven temperatures up to 35 Celsius.
Meanwhile, Russian planes dropped bombs on the Chechen village of Gekhi yesterday despite assurances by local people that rebel fighters had left it. There was no immediate information on casualties.
Villagers barred from returning to Gekhi, about 30 km south west of the capital Grozny, said there had been bombardments earlier in the day.
. Vice President Al Gore, on the eve of a visit to Moscow, said yesterday the US was "extremely concerned" about renewed fighting in Chechnya and called on both sides to honour the truce.