Russia police looks for missing safes

MOSCOW, Aug 7 (Reuters) Russian criminal police are trying to track down two huge safes containing classified documents that had been removed from its offices by mistake as scrap metal, Kommersant daily newspaper reported today.

The daily quoted a police source as saying that workers, who were renovating the Interior Ministry building in mid-July, moved the safes to the yard from which they had been picked up by scrap metal collectors among other decommissioned equipment.

The paper said checks at the scrap metal collection centre yielded no results. Its source did not say what kind of documents the safes had contained.

''One has to hope that the safes had been utilised together with their contents,'' the police source told Kommersant. ''I even do not want to think about other options.'' Interfax news agency said that an investigation had been launched into the disappearance of the safes. Police refused to comment.

REUTERS KR VV1421