Russian security forces have arrested 15 suspected members of a banned Islamic organisation in Moscow after confiscating improvised bombs and other weapons in a raid on an apartment, the country's interior ministry said.

A statement issued on Wednesday by the ministry said that the detainees were members of a group called Takfir Wal-Hijra, which was formed in Egypt in the late 1960s and was banned in Russia as a religious extremist organisation in 2010.

The ministry claimed the group that is linked to al-Qaeda was led by a man who had come to Moscow after studying in Arab states. Police were shown opening plastic bags holding grenades and pistols as well as a heavy black object identified by one unnamed officer as an explosive belt.

"The suspects organization funded with money from criminal activities," the source said. November 5, another member of this organization little known, suspected of recruiting young women, was arrested in the region near Moscow.

Several attacks were committed in Russia in recent years by women, most recently on October 21. A woman from Dagestan, unstable republic in the North Caucasus was blows herself up on a bus in Volgograd (south), killing six people.