RUSSIAN AUTHORITIES have blamed Islamist militants from the North Caucasus after two female suicide bombers killed at least 38 people and injured 72 in attacks on Moscow’s underground during the morning rush hour yesterday.
The first explosion tore through the second carriage of a train at Lubyanka metro station at 7.50am. The second, 40 minutes later, went off in a carriage at Park Kultury station, near Gorky Park.
Aleksandr Bortnikov, head of the Federal Security Service, the secret police, said: “The preliminary version indicates the terrorist act was carried out by a group with links to the Northern Caucasus, and we consider this the most likely version.”
Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s president, said the fight against terrorism would be carried out “without hesitation, to the end” and ordered that security be intensified across the country. Prime minister Vladimir Putin, who as president in 1999 launched a war to crush Chechen separatism, broke off a trip to Siberia and declared “terrorists will be destroyed”.
Police said they had found human remains at both sites, including the head of what they believed was one of the bombers. The two women are believed to belong to a legion of women recruited by separatist Chechen rebels, known in Russia as the Black Widows. The ominous nickname highlights the loss of male relatives – usually husbands or brothers – that pushes such women to commit the suicide bombings and mass hostage-takings that were a hallmark of Chechnya’s earlier separatist campaigns.
The FSB security service, successor to the KGB, said it suspected that the explosive hexogen was used, and estimated the strength of the blasts at 4kg of TNT equivalent for the Lubyanka station bombing, and up to 2kg for the Park Kultury attack.
Lubyanka metro station is next to the FSB headquarters.
Andrew Kuchins of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies said that by attacking the Lubyanka station, the suicide bombers had targeted the core institution responsible for protecting the Russian people.
“It’s pretty in-your-face,” said Mr Kuchins. “It sends a signal that everyone is vulnerable.”
The attacks, the most serious Moscow has experienced since 2004, could presage a worsening of the civil war under way in Russia’s North Caucasus region. Previous attacks have been blamed on Chechen militants.
Before yesterday, the most recent suspected large-scale terror attack in Russia was in November last year, when 27 people were killed aboard the luxury Nevsky Express, which was derailed by an explosion en route from Moscow to St Petersburg.
The most recent attacks on the Moscow metro had been in February 2004, when 40 people were killed and 134 injured by a bomb on a carriage near Avtozavodskaya station. A Chechen group claimed responsibility. In August 2004, a Chechen killed 10 people when she blew herself up outside Rizhskaya metro station. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010)