MOSCOW (AP) - A handful of Russian doomsday cult members on Friday crawled out of the damp cave where they had holed up for months awaiting the end of the world after authorities removed two rotting corpses from their underground lair.

The nine were the last of the 35 men, women and children that had dug into a hillside near the Volga region town of Penza in November and threatened to blow themselves up with gas canisters if officials tried to forcibly remove them.

The last quit their hideout after officials found the bodies of two female cult members who died in the cave and warned survivors they could be poisoned by fumes from the decomposing bodies.

Emergency officials said they found the corpses by accident while trying to strengthen the cave supports. The elaborate structure - complete with sleeping rooms, a makeshift kitchen and religious altars - suffered partial cave-ins earlier this year caused by melting snow.

Cult members who left the cave earlier told local journalists that the women died of cancer and exhaustion.

"We could smell the stench through ventilation holes," a local official involved in the negotiations, Vladimir Provotorov, was quoted by RIA-Novosti as saying. "As we pulled out the dead bodies, we suggested the others leave. They agreed."

Police said they offered the cult members food, but they refused to take it.

"We fried some potatoes for them and brought cucumbers from home, but they refused to eat," police spokesman Alexei Doppel said on NTV television. "They said their religious beliefs don't allow them to take food on Wednesdays and Fridays."

Most cave inhabitants abandoned the sit-in in March and April on medical grounds or because they were just sick and tired of sleeping in the dirt that kept falling from above.

The cult leader, Pyotr Kuznetsov, declared himself a prophet several years ago. An engineer, Kuznetsov goes by the title Father Pyotr. He left his family and established the True Russian Orthodox Church and recruited followers in Russia and Belarus.

Kuznetsov reportedly told followers that the end of the world would come in May and that in the afterlife they would be judging whether others deserved heaven or hell. Followers were not allowed to watch television, listen to the radio or handle money, Russian media reported.

Kuznetsov didn't go into the cave. He lived with some of his followers in a nearby house, and was hospitalized last month after he beat himself over the head repeatedly with a wooden stick in what officials said was a suicide attempt.

Kuznetsov faces criminal charges of setting up a religious organization associated with violence.

Also Friday, an employee of the national television network NTV was beaten by two law enforcement officers near the cave entrance, the Life.ru portal reported.

Yevgeny Gorin had been sleeping in a tent when two men approached and asked him to leave, the Web site said. They then knocked him to the ground and began punching and kicking him, the site said.

Video posted on the Web site and aired on NTV showed one man holding the journalist on the ground and beating him while another man watched. The NTV worker appeared to be guarding a TV camera under his body. Later footage showed him with a bloodied face.

A police spokesman said on air that NTV would receive an explanation.

Associated Press writer Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this report.