Moscow was targeted by the third suicide bombing in a week on Tuesday night, when a woman blew herself up at the entrance to a busy metro station, killing 10 people and injuring 51, many of whom were in a critical condition, officials said.
The explosion took place at about 8.05pm outside the Ryizhskaya metro station in north-eastern Moscow. The Russian television channel NTV showed images of two men lying unconscious on the pavement. They were 10 metres from the entrance to the metro, which services a popular supermarket and an electronics market that had closed 10 minutes earlier.
Moscow’s mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, said that the suspected bomber was ”heading for the metro but came across the police … was afraid of them and decided to kill herself”.
Other witness accounts said a further explosion caused a car, which had been parked near the metro minutes earlier, to blow up, engulfing a nearby Audi and a truck in flames.
Sergei Ignatchenko, a spokesperson for the Russian security services, the FSB, told NTV that the ”basic version of events is that it was a suicide bomber”. He said 10 had died and of the 51 injured 49 were still in hospital. Four of the dead were thought to be children.
An extremist Islamic group, the Islambouli Brigades, said in a statement on the internet: ”We … announce our responsibility for this operation which comes in support of Muslims in Chechnya,” Reuters reported. The statement said the bombing was a blow to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, ”who slaughtered Muslims time and again”.
It promised further attacks against ”infidel” Russia.
The same group claimed it was behind two female suicide bombers who brought down two passenger airliners en route from Moscow to the southern towns of Volgograd and Sochi last Tuesday. Ninety people died in the attacks, which were blamed on Chechen separatist militants.
Investigators are seeking information about two Chechen women believed to have been on board the planes. Dozens of Chechen women, called ”black widows” because they have lost husbands or family members in the violence in Chechnya, have become suicide bombers. On Monday, Moscow confirmed its choice of candidate would replace the late Akhmad Kadyrov, assassinated in May, as Chechen president. The new president, former policeman Alu Alkhanov, is expected to continue Moscow’s policy of using loyal Chechens to suppress separatist sentiment in the republic.
After Tuesday’s blast, NTV showed a red Lada car aflame, and two men, their shirts pulled above their heads, lying on the pavement beside a wall. Another man, his leg bleeding, was shown being helped by a policeman.
”There was a powerful blast and then a smaller one. I thought my roof would come off,” Sergei Pyslaru (30) who was driving down a nearby street, told Associated Press.
Alexei Borodin (29) was walking with his mother when he heard ”a very powerful bang”.
”Something flew past my head, I don’t know what it was. There were people lying in the square,” he said. ”There were pieces of bodies … We were walking through pieces of people.” Borodin said he saw ”about five people” too badly hurt to get up.
The blast happened in a capital city where special and emergency services are well-practised at cleaning up and investigating bomb attacks. Ten ambulances were reportedly on the scene within two minutes, along with FSB sappers.
Most of the injured were hurt by flying glass.
The Itar-Tass news agency said the same type of explosives that were used in a bomb at a bus stop last Tuesday were used in the blast, and that fragments of bolt and metal were used as shrapnel, a common tactic by Chechen separatist militants. Mayor Luzhkov said up to one kilogram of explosives had been used.
It was the second time a metro station has been targeted by a bomb this year. A train leaving the Avtozavodskaya metro was targeted in February, killing more than 40 people. – Guardian Unlimited Â