Moscow Subway Blasts Kill 34 in Deadliest Attacks Since 2004

[frigidmagi]

businessweek

At least 34 people died in dual bombings on subway stations in central Moscow, including one next to the headquarters of the Federal Security Service, the deadliest attacks in the Russian capital since 2004.

A bomb exploded at the Lubyanka station, less than a kilometer from Red Square, at 7:56 a.m. local time today, killing 22 and injuring 11, said Irina Andrianova, a spokeswoman for the Emergency Situations Ministry. A blast at the Park Kultury station on the Garden Ring Road at 8:37 a.m. left 12 dead and wounded 15.

Both explosions occurred in the second subway car of the trains as people were getting on and off, Andrianova said on state television today.

The bombing of a subway train traveling between the Avtozavodskaya and Paveletskaya stations in 2004 killed 42 people and wounded 250. Then-President Vladimir Putin blamed that attack on Chechen separatists.

[The Minx]

A Chechen leader has claimed responsibility for ordering the attack:

Link

(CNN) -- Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov claimed that he personally gave orders to attack the Moscow subway this week, according to a Chechen rebel Web site.

Kavkaz Center, a Web site that regularly carries messages from the rebels, released a video in which Umarov said he was behind the Monday attack.

The attack was an act of revenge for what Umarov called a "massacre conducted by the Russian occupants against the poorest residents of Chechnya and Ingushetia," the Web site says.

According to the site, the video was taped the same day as the attacks.

Monday's blasts tore through the Lubyanka and Park Kultury stations in central Moscow -- the female bombers detonating their explosives about 40 minutes apart, starting just before 8 a.m. (12 a.m. ET).

Authorities said the attacks killed at least 39 people and wounded more than 60 others.

An estimated 500,000 people were riding trains throughout the capital at the time of the attacks.

On Tuesday, Russian police released photographs of two women suspected of carrying out the attacks.

Special services were also seeking three suspected accomplices of the bombers, Russian state TV reported, citing Moscow police spokesman Viktor Biryukov.

They were hunting for a 30-year-old man from the Northern Caucasus who was seen on security cameras wearing dark clothes and a black baseball cap, and two women, aged 22 and 45, both ethnic Slavs, who allegedly assisted the man, state TV reported.

Inflaming more hate by bombing civilians is what these kinds of "leaders" do, because they derive all their authority from the continued existence of the conflict.