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An explosion that officials said was caused by a gas leak leveled a mosque in Chechnya’s second-largest city, while Russian forces pressed sweeps Monday against rebels.
The overnight explosion caused no casualties but damaged neighboring buildings in Gudermes.
Vsevolod Chernov, the chief prosecutor of the Moscow-appointed Chechen administration, said on Russian television that the blast was most likely caused by a natural-gas leak. But Russian media said some witnesses had reported finding shrapnel in the mosque ruins and speculated that it had been targeted in a terrorist attack.
The Federal Security Service said it had discovered a stash of weapons and extremist Islamic literature in the mosque last year, the Interfax news agency reported.
