MOSCOW, March 26, 2008 (AFP) - Members of a Russian doomsday sect who have been barricaded in a cave for the past five months will emerge on Orthodox Easter Sunday on April 27, a local official was quoted as saying on Wednesday.

'The hermits have said they will come out of the cave on Orthodox Easter,' said Oleg Melnichenko, deputy governor of Penza region, located some 500 kilometres (311 miles) southeast of Moscow, Interfax news agency reported.

At least 30 members of the Orthodox sect, including four children, holed themselves up in a cave outside the village of Nikolskoye in November to await the Apocalypse, which they originally calculated would come in May 2008.

The Penza sect members have threatened to blow themselves up with gas canisters if anyone tries to force them out. Officials said they had plentiful reserves of food and water and were able to cook inside the cave.

The Kommersant daily on Tuesday quoted police officers as saying that one of the sect members had fired two shots through a ventilation shaft and threatened to set fire to the cave if police tried to dig through.

Despite the growing influence of the Orthodox church, unofficial sects have rapidly grown in popularity in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, during a confusing time of economic and political upheaval.

The latest announcement by the sect came after the detained leader of the cult Pyotr Kuznetsov, who stayed outside the cave when his followers went in, was brought to the ventilation shaft to speak to the sect, Melnichenko said.

Villagers told AFP earlier that cult members had bought up several houses in the area and could often be seen wandering quietly around the streets of Nikolskoye dressed in long black robes before disappearing into the cave.

Investigators have launched criminal inquiries into Kuznetsov and the cult.