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A woman is being held in Moscow by officers after she brandishing a child's severed head outside a metro station.

Reports in Russia claim the 39-year-old woman shouted 'Allahu Akbar' as she was held this morning.

The woman was seen carrying the head near Oktyabrskoye Pole metro station in the Russian capital this monrning.

She is said to have shouted "I'm a terrorist" while wandering the streets holding the head for around an hour before police arrested her.

UPDATE:

In scenes captured on dramatic CCTV footage around half a dozen officers swooped outside the station and dragged her to the ground.

(Image: twitter)

Eye-witnesses claimed the woman was threatening to blow herself up at the scene but police said the woman had no explosives on her person.

The metro station was searched for explosives but given the all-clear by specialist officers a short time later.

In a statement the Russian Interior Ministry confirmed the woman, who has not been named, had brandished the severed head of a four-year-old girl before being arrested.

The girl's headless body was found at the scene of a fire in a block of flats near the metro station.

(Image: ren.tv)

(Image: ren.tv)

It is believed the woman was babysitting the child and waited for her parents to leave with their older child before the horror unfolded.

Eye-witness Alyona Kuratova told Russia's Rain TV: "I came out of the shopping center and they tried to not let me through. There were a bunch of people there, running, screaming 'bomb, bomb'.

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"I saw that a woman was walking near the Oktyabrskoye Polye metro, near the road, all in black. She had not even some kind of bundle, but a head.

"Maybe it was a child's head, like they were whispering in the crowd. She was shouting something".

Video footage appeared to show the woman walking in the street, looking disorientated and carrying the child's head before her arrest.

(Image: Moscow TV/youtube)

Yulia Ivanova, an official spokesperson for Moscow's Interior Ministry, said: "(The suspect) had waited until the parents left with the older child, and for unknown reasons committed murder of the child, set the apartment on fire and left the scene of the crime."

The woman is currently undergoing psychiatric testing.

The girl's mother was taken to hospital after collapsing when she heard the news.