Women suicide bombers target Moscow Metro, 39 dead

MOSCOW: Two female suicide bombers blew themselves up on Moscow's subway system as it was jam-packed with rush-hour passengers Monday, killing at least 39 people and wounding 38, the city's mayor and other officials said.

Emergency Ministry spokeswoman Svetlana Chumikova said 23 people were killed in an explosion shortly before 8 a.m. at the Lubyanka station in central Moscow. The station is underneath the building that houses the main offices of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the KGB's main successor agency.

A second explosion hit the Park Kultury station about 45 minutes later. Chumikova said at least 12 were dead there. The ministry later said 38 people were injured.

Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov said both explosions were believed to have been set off on the trains.

``The first data that the FSB has given us is that there were two female suicide bombers,'' Luzhkov told reporters at the Park Kultury site.

The blasts practically paralyzed movement in the city center as emergency vehicles sped to the stations.

In the Park Kultury blast, the bomber was wearing a belt packed with plastic explosive and set it off as the train's doors opened, said Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for Russia's top investigative body. The woman has not been identified, he told reporters.

The last confirmed terrorist attack in Moscow was in August 2004, when a suicide bomber blew herself up outside a city subway station, killing 10 people.

Responsibility for that blast was claimed by Chechen rebels and suspicion in Monday's explosions is likely to focus on them and other separatist groups in the restive North Caucasus region.

In February, Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov warned in an interview on a rebel-affiliated Website that ``the zone of military operations will be extended to the territory of Russia ... the war is coming to their cities.''

Umarov also claimed his fighters were responsible for the November bombing of the Nevsky Express passenger train that killed 26 people en route from Moscow to St. Petersburg.

The Moscow subway system is one of the world's busiest, carrying around 7 million passengers on an average workday, and is a key element in running the sprawling and traffic-choked city.

Helicopters hovered over the Park Kultury station area, which is near the renowned Gorky Park.

Passengers, many of them in tears, streamed out of the station, one man exclaiming over and over ``This is how we live!''

few days back---
Al-Qaida hiding bombs in breast implants, says MI5
-www.unp.me/f46/al-qaida-hiding-bombs-in-breast-implants-says-mi5-74005/

awwww so she hidden bombs there

Victims' kin cry revenge as body bags hauled out
march 30
MOSCOW: About half an hour after the first explosion in Lubyanka station, a second blast went off in a carriage of a train on the platform at the Park Kultury metro station, also in central Moscow and named after the iconic Gorky Park that lies over the river.

Rescuers grimly hauled out body bags from the ornate stations in the depths of one of the world's biggest underground systems, amid calls for bloody revenge from victims' relatives.

Footage broadcast on state television showed dazed passengers in the metro station holding their heads in despair and corpses strewn on the ground as dust and smoke swirled through the tunnel.

Security services kept a tight cordon around the Lubyanka metro station. "According to preliminary information, both blasts have been executed by female suicide bombers," said an FSB spokesman.

Russian news agencies said body parts suspected to come from the two women had been found at the two stations and had been sent away for laboratory analysis.

Alexandra Antonova, an editor for the RIA-Novosti news agency, said she had just got on the train leaving the Lubyanka station when the explosion shook her carriage.

"The loud boom stuffed up my ears. But the train didn't stop. Nobody had time to understand what had happened," Antonova said.


Putin, Medvedev vow to track down & destroy attackers
AGENCIES, Mar 30, 2010, 01.36am IST

KRASNOYARSK/MOSCOW: Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin vowed on Monday to destroy those responsible for the Moscow metro suicide attacks, even as President Dmitry Medvedev said the country will fight terrorism to the end.

"A crime that is terrible in its consequences and heinous in its manner has been committed," Putin said at the start of a video conference with senior emergencies officials. "I am confident that law enforcement bodies will spare no effort to track down and punish the criminals. Terrorists will be destroyed," said Putin, who was on a visit to the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk.

Reacting to the attack, President Medvedev said that Russia will fight terror without hesitation and to the end, and ordered security to be stepped up on transport across the country.

"The policy to suppress terrorism in our country and the fight with terrorism will be continued," Russian news agencies quoted Medvedev as telling an emergency meeting convened after the twin blasts. "We will continue the operation against terrorists without hesitation and until the end," he added.

Update-------------- one more bomb blast

Russia suicide bombings kill 12

AFP, Mar 31, 2010, 05.06pm IST


MOSCOW: Suicide bombers killed 12 people on Wednesday in double strikes targeting police in Russia's turbulent North Caucasus, shaking the country just two days after attacks in Moscow left 39 dead.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said the latest attack in the North Caucasus region may be linked to the strikes on the Moscow metro by two female suicide bombers, as the authorities moved to prevent a resurgence of militant violence.

Nine police including a local police chief were among the dead in the double attack in the North Caucasus region of Dagestan, a region on the Caspian Sea already wracked by an Islamist insurgency.

"I do not rule out that the same gang (as in Moscow) was at work here," a stern-looking Putin told a government meeting in televised remarks.

He said it did not matter where the bombings took place or whether victims of those bombings were Orthodox Christians, Muslims or people of other faiths. "This is a crime against Russia," Putin said.

Wednesday's first blast was caused by a car occupied by a suicide bomber that blew up when police tried to stop it during a regular check in the town of Kizlyar in Dagestan, officials said.

The force of the first blast left a massive crater in the road and reduced surrounding cars to burned-out wrecks, television pictures showed.

After 20 minutes, another blast was triggered by a second suicide bomber wearing a police uniform who approached law enforcement officials working at the scene of the first blast, a spokeswoman for the Dagestani interior ministry told AFP.

The spokesman Nizami Radzhabov said the first blast was caused by explosives of 200 kilogrammes of TNT equivalent stuffed into a Niva jeep "in which there was a suicide bomber", Interfax reported.

The investigative committee of Russian prosecutors said in a statement that 12 people were killed, nine of them police, and 23 were wounded.

Among the dead was local Kizlyar district police chief, Vitaly Vedernikov, it said.

The new attacks were the latest blow to Russian leaders who pledged after Monday's Moscow metro blasts to hunt down and destroy the organisers of the suicide bombings who they said had links to North Caucasus militant groups.

Muslim Dagestan has been one of the Caucasus regions most troubled by militant violence, along with Chechnya and Ingushetia.

Putin had on Tuesday ordered security forces to snare the masterminds of the metro bombings, saying they should be scraped out from the sewers in language reminiscent of his 1999 promise to strike at rebels in the "outhouse".

The Kommersant daily quoted an investigation source as saying Tuesday that militants had recruited 30 potential suicide bombers in recent months, with 21 still at large after nine already blew themselves up.

The Moscow female suicide bombers blew themselves up within 40 minutes of each other in the morning rush hour at stations in the centre of the city.

The latest explosions come as Russia buried the first two victims of Monday's blasts, with an increased police presence tangible in the still tense capital.

Police said that a total of 100 bomb alerts had been received in Moscow over the last 24 hours, all turning out to be false.

Moscow's police chief Vladimir Kolokoltsev said that three times as many police as usual -- many of them equipped with sniffer dogs -- were on patrol in the city's metro system.

Attacks on officials and security personnel have been almost a daily occurrence in Russia's Northern Caucasus but the metro bombings in the heart of Moscow have shaken Russians to the core after a lull of six years.

Last month, Islamist rebels led by Chechen militant leader Doku Umarov pledged a holy war, saying attacks would be staged throughout the country.

Police were searching for a possible male accomplice who is reported to have accompanied the female bombers to Moscow and was photographed by surveillance cameras.

Russian police have also released grainy but grisly photographs to media showing the severed heads of the two bombers' corpses.