Bombing suspect kept low profile while in Russia

If Tamerlan Tsarnaev was already plotting the Boston Marathon bombings when he stayed in this bustling city at the heart of Islamist insurgency last year, neighbours say he hid it well.

The ethnic Chechen killed in a shoot-out with US police last week spent at least a month last summer helping his father renovate his first-floor apartment next door to a dentistry in Makhachkala, a city in the Dagestan region on the Caspian Sea.

Neighbours say they saw little of Tsarnaev while he was staying in the run-down, five-storey apartment bloc, and those who knew him saw nothing unusual.