More Russia cult members abandon doomsday bunker

By Chris Baldwin

NIKOLSKOE, Russia (Reuters) - Fourteen members of a Russian doomsday cult on Tuesday abandoned the remote underground bunker where they had been hiding for nearly half a year awaiting the end of the world.

A local official said the cult members believed God had sent them a sign to come to the surface when part of their dugout collapsed. Another 14 people were still underground but officials were hopeful they too would come out.

"All are in good health, considering they have spent half a year underground," said Oleg Melnichenko, deputy governor of the Penza region where members have been holed up since October.

"They have refused medical attention and are now in a house, praying, where they say they will stay until Orthodox Easter (on April 27) ... They said that God had given them a signal to leave after the fourth partial cave-in."

The group that emerged from the bunker on Tuesday included two girls aged eight and 12.

Melnichenko said the remaining 14 members were in another chamber that had been cut off from the exit by the cave-in and that negotiations were continuing to persuade them to leave.

A Reuters reporter who crawled down into the now empty section of the bunker found a makeshift kitchen and sleeping space hollowed out of the earth. Among the belongings left behind were a chess set and pages from a children's book.

The cult members had been refusing to come out of their bunker before the apocalypse, which their leader Pavel Kuznetsov -- now undergoing psychiatric treatment -- had predicted would happen in April or May this year.