CHECHEN REBELS have claimed responsibility for last week’s deadly bombing of a Moscow-St Petersburg express train and vowed to launch more attacks on strategic Russian targets.
The Friday-night attack on the prestigious Nevsky Express killed 26 people, injured about 100 others, and stoked fears of a new terror campaign in the Russian heartland and a crackdown by Moscow’s forces in the turbulent North Caucasus.
“This operation was prepared and executed along with other acts of sabotage against a series of strategically important sites in Russia, which were planned at the start of this year and successfully carried out on the orders of the Emir of the Caucasus, Doku Umarov,” said a statement on the Kavkazcenter.com website, citing a letter it said it had received from Chechen militants.
The letter said the attack on the Nevsky Express – which it claimed was “was mainly used by the ruling bureaucrats of Russia” – was part a campaign by rebel leader Umarov that would “continue until those occupying the Caucasus stop their policy of killing ordinary Muslims”.
Russia claimed earlier this year to have ended anti-terrorist operations in Chechnya, but recent months have seen a bloody surge in attacks against officials, police and security force personnel in the neighbouring republics of Dagestan and Ingushetia.
Moscow says the militants are Islamist extremists with links to al-Qaeda. Many analysts note that religious radicalism is growing in the North Caucasus, but insist that it is less of a factor than grinding poverty, rampant corruption and the brutality of local, Kremlin-backed militias in driving young men to join the rebels.
Russian officials have not formally accused insurgents from the North Caucasus over Friday’s attack but have said that it bore their hallmarks, while unnamed police sources have told local media that they are searching for four men of “non-Slavic” appearance who were allegedly seen close to the site.
The attack has deeply alarmed Russians who are used to daily reports of violence in the North Caucasus, but have not experienced a major terror incident outside that region since rebels blew up two airliners and exploded a bomb in a Moscow metro station in August 2004.
In a live television broadcast today, Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin is expected to address security fears.
