Office of Russian Opposition Newspaper Firebombed

Grigory Yavlinsky's Yabloko party said security cameras captured the January 28 attack.

Russia's Yabloko opposition party says the office of a Russian regional newspaper that it publishes has been destroyed in an attack with a Molotov cocktail.

Yabloko's website says the attack on the "Vecherny Krasnokamsk" weekly in the Perm region of the Urals occurred early on January 28.

No one was reported hurt in the predawn incident.

The report says an unknown man broke a window of the newspaper office and threw a homemade firebomb inside -- destroying the office within minutes.

The report says security cameras captured images of the attackers.

The party linked the attack to the newspaper's investigative reports about alleged corruption by Krasnokamsk Mayor Yury Chechetkin.

Chechetkin has rejected the charges of corruption as "unfounded accusations" in comments to Russia's "Kommersant" newspaper.

Grigory Yavlinsky, founder of the Yabloko party, was officially barred this week from running in the March 4 presidential election. Election officials cited problems with more than one-quarter of the 2-million-plus signatures submitted in support of his candidacy.

compiled from agency reports