Russia braces for new wave of terror attacks in metropolitan areas

Published 30 March 2010

Russia’s cities are bracing themselves for a renewed terrorist bombing campaign after two “black widow” suicide bombers launched a rush-hour attack on the Moscow metro killing 38 people and injuring 64; the Monday explosions were the deadliest suicide attacks in Moscow since 2004, when the bombing of a metro train killed 41

The double bombing on Monday was the deadliest terror attack inside Russia in six years and raised concerns that Islamist radicals were making good on repeated promises of a new terror offensive. The explosions were the deadliest suicide attacks in Moscow since 2004 when the bombing of a metro train killed 41, part of a string of attacks carried out by Chechen militants.

The first explosion shortly before 8 a.m. ripped through a train that had stopped in the Lubyanka station just below the headquarters of Russia’s FSB security service, the successor to the Soviet KGB. The second bomb exploded forty minutes later in a carriage of a train on the platform at the Park Kultury metro station, named after Moscow’s Gorky Park.

The Telegraph’s Andrew Osborn writes that the attacks, on one of the busiest subway systems in the world which carries 6.5 million commuters a day, were triggered by two women, who detonated belts around their waists packed with explosives and metal bolts. CCTV footage from inside the metro showed the women did not bother to cover their faces, while security sources suggest they may have detonated their bombs using their mobile phones.

Security sources said they were looking for two women “of Slav appearance” and a man who were caught on CCTV camera with the suicide bombers and are suspected accomplices.

 

Officials said the death toll could still rise as eight of the more than sixty wounded remain in a critical condition. Officials said twenty-four were killed in the Lubyanka blast, and twelve were killed in the Park Kultury. An additional two people died in hospital but officials did not specify which station they had come from.

Osbom writes that although no group claimed responsibility for the attack, Alexander Bortnikov, head of the FSB security service, said early indications suggested the suicide bombers were definitely from the North Caucasus, an area that includes Chechnya.

The women terrorists are referred to as “black widows” because they have lost their husbands in the Chechen wars Russia has fought against the Islamist rebels and are therefore willing to launch attacks in revenge.

 

Doku Umarov, the leader of the Chechen rebel movement, issued an ominous warning in February saying terror would be coming to Russia’s big cities in the near future. “Blood will no longer be limited to our (Caucasus) cities and towns,” he said. “The war is coming to their (Russian) cities.”

Islamist rebels have confined