MOSCOW, April 1, 2008 (AFP) - Fourteen members of a doomsday sect have left a cave in western Russia after almost five months waiting underground for the end of the world, leaving 14 more behind, said a regional spokesman.

'Two cells collapsed so they had to leave early,' Anton Sharonov, a spokesman for the local administration in Penza region, told AFP.

Fourteen people came to the surface, including two children, he said. Women wearing head scarves were shown walking unsteadily near the cave in footage shown on Russia's NTV channel.

Thirty-five members of the Orthodox sect, including four children, barricaded themselves in the cave five months ago to await the Apocalypse, which they calculated would come in May 2008.

Before leaving the cave on Tuesday, the 14 sect members asked for guarantees that they could retreat to a house in the village and wait out the Apocalypse there, said Sharonov.

After a different part of the cave collapsed last week, seven cult members came out after negotiations with their leader, Pyotr Kuznetsov, who stayed on the surface when his followers went into the cave.

Kuznetsov was released from a psychiatric hospital as part of the negotiations and now lives with the sect in the village.

During talks with officials in recent months, cult members had threatened to blow themselves up with gas canisters if police tried to get them out by force.

'We were saved by a miracle,' said Sharonov, saying that the most hardened members of the sect, including one man who had threatened officials with gun, were among those who left the cave on Tuesday.

But worries remain about the 14 people left underground, including two young girls -- one of them just two years old. 'We are most scared for the young ones,' Sharonov said.

Flood water caused parts of the cave to collapse, said Penza deputy governor Oleg Melnichenko, Interfax news agency reported, but the remaining followers are in a section that is safe from collapse.

'They are not threatened with a catastrophic situation as the part where they are located is supported by the roots of trees,' Interfax quoted him as saying.

Russian authorities on Monday had brought in an Orthodox priest specialising in apocalyptic literature to persuade the sect members to come out, Interfax reported.

Sects and belief in the power of clairvoyants have grown in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, during a confusing time of economic and political upheaval.