Finnish seismologists detect five blasts in Russian waters

Finnish seismologists detected five underwater blasts in Russian waters in the Baltic Sea last week, the Helsinki University Institute of Seismology said on Tuesday.

"We have detected five explosions, the largest of them having been of 1.8 in magnitude and the smallest of 1.3," the institute's director Timo Tiira told Reuters, referring to the Richter scale used to describe the intensity of seismic activity.

Four explosions were recorded on Thursday and one on Friday in Russian territorial waters in the Gulf of Finland, Tiira said, adding it had been clear that the observations had been caused by blasts and not by other seismic activity.

"It can be seen in the shape of the signal and in the content of its frequency," he said.

The institute did not know what had caused the blasts but that similar disturbances had been detected during previous naval drills and sweeping of old mines from the sea bottom, Tiira said.

"We have detected explosions in that same area before, but not very often, not even every year," he said.

The Russian Ministry of Defence was not immediately available for comment.