RUSSIA: Russia's Interior Ministry is taking drastic action to curb terrorism after Moscow was hit yesterday with the second Chechen bombing in five days.
Sweeping checks on tens of thousands of Muscovites without residency permits will be ordered in an attempt to stop what appears to be a campaign of bombing aimed at the Russian capital. "The tactic of pinpointing citizens who have no residence registration is a very important one," the Interior Minister, Mr Boris Gryzlov, said on Moscow television.
The Minister has also announced plans for a new law that would give police the power to detain terror suspects for 30 days without charge.
Police have also tapped into mobile phones in an attempt to listen in on the bombers.
The moves follow the explosion of a bomb being carried by a Chechen woman outside a city-centre restaurant in the early hours of yesterday morning.
The woman, named by news agencies as 22-year-old Chechen Ms Zarmina Muzhikhoyeva, was refused entry to the Imbir restaurant on Tverskaya, one of the city's busiest roads, in the early hours.
What alerted security staff is not clear, but the woman then threatened to blow up the building, at which point police were called.
The device exploded as a bomb disposal officer tried to defuse it, killing him instantly and wrecking bars and boutiques in this fashionable street.
This attack follows the bombing on Saturday at the Tushina aerodrome rock festival in which two female suicide bombers killed themselves and 14 teenagers.
News agencies report that Muzhikhoyeva's husband was killed fighting Russian forces in Chechnya, strengthening suspicions that, like the weekend attackers, she is a member of a Chechen female suicide squad dubbed the Black Widows.
Moscow has evidence that 36 women, all of whom have lost fathers, sons or husbands in the Chechen war, have been trained by rebel forces as suicide bombers.
One bonus for Russian forces is that they have their first live suspect: all other Black Widows, including 18 at last October's Moscow theatre siege and in a string of attacks since then, have died in their attacks.
A suspected male accomplice was detained later in the day, and there are hopes that this could lead to the rolling-up of the terror network in the capital.
The last time Moscow braced itself for terror attacks was in the summer of 1999, when a string of apartment buildings were blown up by massive bombs, killing 300.
Those bombings were blamed on Chechen separatists by the authorities, although no one was ever caught.
For whatever reason, it seems clear that Chechen rebels have changed tactics, ending the practice of restricting targets to the province.
Instead ordinary civilians in Moscow are the target.