After working throughout the night under the glare of spotlights, clearance teams were still recovering bodies mid-morning on Tuesday. An earlier bombing last Thursday, which killed 92, had held the previous record for the number of dead. Rescue workers indicated that the toll would climb further. Rescue workers estimated that around 100 people were buried under rubble when the massive bomb went off at 5 a.m. on Monday.

Rescue services, having given up hope of finding anyone alive, were to continue searching the wreckage of the destroyed building throughout Tuesday with mechanical diggers.

Meanwhile, composite police portraits were issued of two more suspects inthe bomb case, ITAR-TASS said quoting an official statement. The portraits depicted two men, one very young with brown hair and the other with a round face and curly black hair. They reportedly ``carried something'' into a furniture store on the ground floor of the building, police reports said.

Ordering a nationwide security clampdown, President Boris Yeltsin said on Monday that ``terrorists have declared war on us'' and vowed in a nationwide address to take swift action to stop such attacks. Some officials have linked the attack to unrest by Islamic insurgents in the southern republics of Chechnya and Dagestan.

Security has been stepped up across the country though the government stopped short of declaring emergency. ``The terrorists have declared war on us, the Russian people,'' Yeltsin said in a solemn nationwide televised address.

``We are living under a growing terrorist threat. This means that we must unite all forces in society and in government to repel the enemy from within,'' he said. PrimeMinister Vladimir Putin, rushing back from an Asian summit in New Zealand, vowed a ``super-tough'' response, adding that ``Russia and its capital cannot and will not be hostages of terrorist pressure, no matter where it comes from.'' Yeltsin ordered security tightened around nuclear power stations, oil storage facilities, pipelines and other key installations, and instructed Moscow police to check all basements, depots and empty buildings in the Capital over the next 24 hours.

Luzhkov meanwhile announced a ``special regime to guarantee security of (Moscow) residents,'' promising the ``toughest and most radical of measures'' to keep criminals out of the capital, but insisted no emergency would be imposed. Extra police were ordered deployed at city metro (subway) stations, airports, markets and railway stations, notably the Paveletsky station where trains arrive from the troubled Caucasus region, which many believe is linked to the spate of attacks.

However, security appeared at normal levels around theinterior ministry and the FSB headquarters in Moscow. Security officials were facing a mammoth task of making safe a capital of nine million inhabitants spread over 1,000 square kilometres and including 30,000 residential blocks as well as a vast array of business and administrative premises. Yeltsin told his security chiefs that the latest explosion was the ``third terrorist act in a few days'' in Moscow, adding that ``the capital needs to be placed under special control. ``We must not tackle the problem on ethnic or religious grounds. We will not allow purges based on nationalities,'' he said.

Yeltsin said unspecified forces were probably counting on a racist crackdown ``to sow panic, to lead the country to a state of emergency, to destroy the government and spread anarchy.''

Yeltsin urged calm and increased vigilance, vowing the ``authorities will act adequately, severely, quickly and resolutely to the challenge posed by the bandits.'' Yeltsin appointed First Deputy Prime Minister Nikolai Aksyonenko tooversee the investigation into the blast.