TerrorismAt least nine killed in St. Petersburg metro bombing

Published 3 April 2017

At least nine people have been killed and about fifty more injured when a bomb exploded on a train in St. Petersburg. An explosive device went off at 2:20 p.m. local time on a train leaving the Technology Institute station and heading to the Sennaya Ploshchad station. All train travel in the St. Petersburg area has been suspended, and Russian security services found and defused another explosive device at the Ploschad Vosstaniya station.

At least nine people have been killed and about fifty more injured when a bomb exploded on a train in St. Petersburg.

An explosive device went off at 2:20 p.m. local time on a train leaving the Technology Institute station and heading to the Sennaya Ploshchad station.

All train travel in the St. Petersburg area has been suspended, and Russian security services found and defused another explosive device at the Ploschad Vosstaniya station.

Russia’s state investigative committee said it had opened a criminal case over the blast, and that it is also looking at the explosion as a possible terrorist attack.

The Guardian reports that train stations in Russia are equipped with many CCTVs, and the police said the perpetrators may have been caught on one of the cameras. The police has also received a search warrant for two people, but no names or explanation have been offered.

President Vladimir Putin was in town – his hometown – on a visit, and was taken to the scene of the explosion.

Video footage show injured people lying on the platform, and a huge hole in the side of a carriage, with metal wreckage strewn across the platform.

The video footage also shows passengers trying to break the windows on one carriage in an effort to escape.

Putin said that “The causes of this event have not been determined yet, so it’s too early to talk about [possible causes].

The investigation will show. Certainly, we will consider all variants, common, criminal, first of all, of a terrorist nature.”

St. Petersburg is Russia’s second-largest city with over five million residents.

Russia has been the target of attacks by Chechen separatist militants, and Chechen rebel leaders often target Russian transportation.

At least thirty-eight people were killed in 2010 when two female suicide bombers detonated powerful bombs on packed metro trains in Moscow.

Chechen Islamist militants attacked other soft targets. More than 330 people, half of them children, were killed in 2004 when police stormed a school in southern Russia after Islamists took over the school. In 2002, 120 hostages were killed when police stormed a Moscow theatre to end another hostage taking.