Helena Merriman

And the police then send an explosives expert into the basement and they find three white sacks of powder connected to a detonator and a timer.

And they then test the powder and they find it positive for hexagon, which is a military explosive that was used in at least one of the other apartment bombs.

So the residents are racing outside and they end up staying in a local cinema for the night.

Someone takes them in, gives them cups of tea to keep them warm.

And the next day you have this manhunt which begins because everyone's desperate to try and catch these bombers.

So the city's under siege.

You have the local FSB, local police residents all looking for the bombers.

You have the roads and trains and airports all blocked.

And then one of the most extraordinary parts of this story is a call comes into the Rizan phone exchange.

And there's a man at a payphone in Rizan who wants to be connected to a number outside the city.

So the operator puts the call through and then she listens in.

And she hears a man saying, the city is locked, we can't get out.

And the person at the other end says to the man, you know, you've got to split up and leave the city immediately.

So she's understandably suspicious.

So she writes down the number that they called, the phone number, send it to local police, and they trace it.

And you'd expect at this point that it might go to Chechen militants, given the narrative at the time.

But instead, it goes to a number belonging to the FSB, Russia's Internal Security Service.

So at this point, what does the FSB say when that number is traced back to them?

This is where the story gets even stranger.

So the police then find the car abandoned.