Nearly 80 people fell ill with coughing and breathing problems on Monday after a gas was released in an apparent criminal attack on a Saint Petersburg store, officials said.
Terrorism was not suspected, a spokesman for the Federal Security Service (FSB) told reporters.
Three of four Maksidom general hardware and household goods shops in Russia's second city were targeted with devices consisting of boxes of gas capsules and clocks set to the current time, the FSB said. No explosives were involved.
PHOTO: AP
Gas was only released in one of the targeted stores.
"The security services are inclined to be believe this to be an act of hooliganism because so far there is no information that this could be a terrorist act," the FSB spokesman said.
Saint Petersburg's police department was quoted as saying by Interfax that a business dispute was probably behind the attack.
The gas had been identified as merkaptan, which is used to give odor to natural gas supplies "and in some cases this gas can cause allergic reactions," the FSB spokesman said.
Merkaptan can also be an ingredient in self-defense weapons, police said.
In the Maksidom shop where the gas was released, 78 people suffered from coughing and breathing difficulties, including 12 who had symptoms of medium strength.
"There were no serious cases," the FSB said.
The gas escaped when the capsule was accidentally knocked over, the FSB said, while in the other two stores, on the outskirts of the city, the devices were discovered and destroyed.
All four Maksidom shops, which were doing business in the busy pre-New Year period, had now been evacuated and closed while police mounted an investigation.
A local spokesman for the emergency situations ministry also told reporters that 78 people had sought medical attention.
Russia, which has been fighting a brutal guerrilla war in the Caucasus region of Chechnya for most of the last decade, has suffered numerous large-scale terrorist attacks in the last few years, including the Beslan school siege and the downing of two airliners that killed hundreds.
However, bloody business and criminal turf wars are also frequent.
On July, 21 people died in a fierce blaze at a shopping centre in the northwest city of Ukhta that police said was probably the result of business-related arson.
Bombings and dozens of shootings -- often unsolved -- have been also been blamed over recent years on mafia battles.
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