MOSCOW, Oct 14: Russian authorities on Monday took steps to calm ethnic tensions after Moscow was rocked by some of its worst rioting in years, sparked by the killing of a Russian youth allegedly by a Muslim migrant from the Caucasus.

Seeking to show a firm hand against illegal migrants, police detained 1,200 people in a raid on a vegetable wholesale market, one of several dotted around the city perimeter that are notorious for employing undocumented workers.

The initially peaceful protest in the Biryulyovo district of southern Moscow to protest the killing of Yegor Shcherbakov, 25, rapidly descended into bloody clashes with the police that left the glass doors of a shopping centre smashed and cars upturned.

Police said late on Sunday that 394 people, reportedly aged mainly between 14 and 25, had been arrested at the site of the riots and during a later raid nearby where rioters had attacked a stopped cargo train. The RIA Novosti news agency said all would be released with the exception of 72 whose cases would be sent to court.

Police said calm had returned to the district after they brought in hundreds of reinforcements in a bid to deal with the crisis and enforced their “Vulkan” operation plan, which is used in case of a terror attack.

After a largely peaceful protest on Saturday, the rioting on Sunday began when protestors attacked a wholesale vegetable market where they thought Shcherbakov’s suspected killer was hiding.

In a move aimed at showing they took locals’ grievances seriously, Moscow police Monday raided the produce market and detained 1,200 people for identity checks.

“About 1,200 people have been taken to the police in the course of a raid on a produce market in Biryulyovo to check their criminal connections,” a representative of the Moscow police said.

Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev said more had to be done to deal with the situation with wholesale vegetable complexes in Moscow, which often employ large numbers of migrants in shadowy circumstances.

“Otherwise all provocateurs and extremists will use any possibility to get young people onto the barricades,” he said at a televised meeting.—AFP