MOSCOW, April 1, 2008 (AFP) - Fourteen members of a Russian doomsday sect emerged from a cave Tuesday after almost five months of waiting for the end of the world, and the remaining 14 could soon follow, officials said.

'There is a high degree of certainty that they will all come out tomorrow,' Oleg Melnichenko, the deputy governor of Penza region, some 700 kilometres (435 miles) southeast of Moscow, was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying.

Cult members 'said they will rest, then pray all night and then they intend to come out of the cave on Wednesday morning,' Interfax reported, citing Melnichenko following negotiations through the cave's ventilation shaft.

After the collapse of parts of the cave due to the melting snow on a windswept ravine outside the village of Nikolskoye, seven members of the Christian sect crawled out last Friday and 14 more came out on Tuesday.

In footage shown on Russian television on Tuesday, women in headscarves were shown walking unsteadily away from the cave and towards a bus. One of them crossed herself before boarding the bus.

Two young girls were among the 14 who emerged from the cave on Tuesday, but two more children -- including a two-year-old girl -- are still believed to be underground as conditions inside the cave deteriorate.

Thirty-five members of the Orthodox sect, which believes bar codes are the work of the devil, 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 remain undisturbed as they waited for the end of the world, officials said.

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

Kuznetsov was released from a local psychiatric hospital as part of the negotiations and now lives with the seven members of the sect in a house in the farming village where he grew up.

The cult members are a splinter group from Russia's Orthodox Church who believe that the outer world is sinful and have rejected all aspects of modernity -- including electricity and telephones.

They were given a cow by local authorities after they said they could not use milk from cartons since it carried bar codes, which they believe are sinful, Interfax news agency reported.

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 and fired warning shots through the cave's ventilation shafts.

Officials expressed relief that Vitaly Nedogon, the unofficial leader of the cult inside the cave, who had threatened officials, was one of those who left the cave on Tuesday.

'We were saved by a miracle,' said Anton Sharonov, a spokesman for the local administration in the Penza region, referring to Nedogon's departure.

Nedogon was quoted as saying that he only left the cave after it collapsed for the fourth time, which he interpreted as a sign from God, Russian news portal life.ru reported.

Russian authorities on Monday had brought in an Orthodox priest specialising in apocalyptic literature from a nearby monastery 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.