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Last members of doomsday cult emerge from cave

May 16, 2008, 12:08 GMT

Moscow - The nine remaining members of an extreme Orthodox cult surfaced Friday from a cave where they barricaded themselves to await the apocalypse six months ago. The other 35 cult members including four children left the underground bunker two months ago in apparent good health when they took cave-ins caused by the spring thaw to be a prophetic sign. Emergency officials have since camped in the fields above the cave in the countryside next to the Russian town of Penza. Cult members had threatened to blow themselves up with stock-piled gas canisters if authorities tried to remove them in November. When police last night pulled out the bodies of two women who died in the bunker, the last doomsday members followed. 'We could smell the stench through ventilation holes,' one local official, Vladimir Provotorov, was quoted by Interfax as saying. 'As we pulled out the dead bodies, we suggested the others leave and they agreed.' Provotorov said authorities feared the nine cultists remaining underground on a vow of silence would be poisoned by the fumes of the decomposing bodies. Sect members who left the cave to go back into retreat in nearby farm houses said one woman had died from voluntary starvation and the other of cancer. Police said the bodies would be taken to the local morgue for examination. The sect members see themselves as true believers who broke from the Russian Orthodox Church led by 'Father Pyotr' Kuznetsov, who forbids his followers from handling products with bar codes and holding identification papers. Kuznetsov has been charged with setting up a religious group linked to violence. He was hospitalized last month after trying to commit suicide by hitting himself over the head with a log. Authorities have deported two Belarusian citizens but allowed the rest of the sect to continue their doomsday watch above ground, providing them with a cow when they refused milk from cartons.