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Moscow suicide blast kills 10, injures 51
At least 10 people were killed and dozens injured when a female suicide bomber blew herself up outside a busy Moscow subway station, officials said, in an attack claimed by the group that said it downed two planes last week.
The explosion caused scenes of carnage at a marketplace beside Rizhskaya station in central Moscow, just a week after 90 people were killed in bomb attacks that brought down two passenger jets and that were blamed on Chechen extremists. Officials, basing their conclusions on eyewitness accounts, were quick to state the attack was carried out by a female suicide bomber spotted before the blast and who was among the dead. Her body was more severely damaged than the other victims. Fifty one people were injured in the blast, 49 of whom had to be hospitalized, authorities said. According to witnesses quoted by police, the woman was walking towards the subway but saw that police were checking the papers of passers-by. She then changed course and the explosion occurred immediately afterwards. In a statement posted on an Islamic website, an Islamist group calling itself the Islambouli Brigades said it had carried out the bombing and described it as a "heroic operation in support of Chechen Muslims." It was the same group that claimed last week to have organized the attack on two Russian passenger planes and, as in the previous claim, it vowed to continue such strikes in Russia. Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov, visiting the scene, said the suspect had used one kilo (2.2 pounds) of explosives, while police said the bomb contained between 300-400 grammes of TNT or the equivalent and was filled with metal fragments. Other officials confirmed Luzhkov's assertion that the blast had been unleashed by a "female suicide bomber". "With a great deal of probability it can be said we are talking about a premeditated explosion carried out by a terrorist female suicide bomber," said a spokesman for the Russian interior ministry. Moscow prosecutor Anatoly Zuyev announced that an investigation had been opened into a terrorist act. The White House in Washington condemned Tuesday's attack and the earlier double airline bombing and said they reinforced a "common cause" with Russia in the fight against terrorism. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan also issued a statement denouncing the attack "in the strongest terms" and expressing condolences to the Russian people and families of the victims. Authorities said a special Moscow municipal holiday scheduled for the weekend was to go ahead but with extra security measures in place, while special patrols were being sent out to train stations and airports. The attack frightened people in the Russian capital already on edge over possible strikes from separatists in Chechnya, who have vowed to carry their five-year fight into Russian cities. "I was walking out of a nearby store when the blast went off and the first thing I saw were torn up bodies," said Alexei Borodin, 29. "Some people were trying to stand up -- but they were no longer people," he said. "There were people without parts of their bodies." He saw one person without a stomach as it had all fallen out.
"My mother told me -- 'We are walking on human remains,'" he said. Men in security service jackets were everywhere as dozens of ambulances and fire trucks cut off traffic in northern Moscow. The blast went off between a bustling Moscow subway station and a crowded supermarket. Smoke rose over sections of the Russian capital for several hours over the blast, whose shock waves smashed windows in the station. News agencies said that the station was closed after the blast and would only reopen when the damage was cleared up. Trains were going through the station without stopping. Passengers were being told through loudspeakers to use different means of transportation or go to other stations. Russian officials have indicated they believe a pair of female suicide bombers were behind the plane crashes on August 24. There was considerable nervousness here over Chechen female suicide bombers, who have carried out deadly attacks at a rock concert, on a pavement close to the Kremlin and in another subway station over the past year. The blast came on the same day that Russian President Vladimir Putin linked the twin plane bombings to the Al-Qaeda network and said those disasters were evidence of international terrorism on Russian soil in Chechnya. |
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