RUSSIA: A suspected female suicide bomber killed six people and injured 14 others in the middle of Moscow yesterday, wreaking havoc outside Red Square with an attack that officials blamed on Chechen rebels.
Police said they were hunting another female suspect who walked away from the blast, which occurred outside the prestigious Hotel National about 100 metres from the Kremlin, and rattled windows in the lower house of parliament that held elections on Sunday.
The bomb, which investigators say was packed with shrapnel, left dead and injured lying amid bloody snow and shattered glass and wrecked luxury cars parked outside the $200-a-night National.
"I heard a loud blast about 10.50 a.m., felt a tremor and fell down," said Mr Marc-Antoine Valverde, a French journalist staying at the National while he covered the elections.
"There were bodies lying there, a man with blood on his face and two injured girls. I saw four or five bodies, one in pieces."
The bomb exploded about 150 metres from the State Duma, the Russian legislature, which will be dominated by supporters of President Vladimir Putin after Sunday's vote.
Other witnesses said they saw a hotel security guard with his legs blown off, and a severed head lying beside a briefcase. Bomb-disposal experts later conducted a controlled explosion on the case.
"There was a big blast, dark smoke, and I could see the corpses. We had to leave our offices for fear of another bomb," said Mr Gennady Raikov, a senior deputy in the Duma.
"Right by the Kremlin, in the very centre of Moscow - what a brazen act."
Police said the suspected bomber had asked for directions to the Duma just seconds before the explosion.
"There were perhaps two women suicide bombers - definitely one," said Moscow's Mayor, Mr Yuri Luzhkov, adding that he thought the Duma was their real target.
"They didn't plan the explosion for there," he said of the Hotel National. "Apparently it went off by accident."
Last Friday 44 people died and more than 140 were hurt when suspected suicide bombers blew up a train near Chechnya, where separatist rebels are fighting their second war in a decade with Moscow's troops.
Mr Putin, whose supporters barely mentioned Chechnya in their overwhelmingly successful election campaign, struck out at the guerrillas yesterday, as he addressed regional leaders to commemorate Friday's 10th anniversary of Russia's constitution.
"It is a foundation for the development of a free market economy, democracy and the development of the nation as a whole and the preservation of its territorial integrity," he said of the constitution.
"The actions of criminals are directed against all of that."