RUSSIA HAS held a national day of mourning as the death toll from yesterday’s double suicide bombing on the Moscow metro increased to 39 when a woman died from her injuries.
Flags flew at half-mast on government buildings yesterday, while entertainment events and shows on television were cancelled. Services were to be held at several churches. Security remained high as police with machine guns and sniffer dogs patrolled subway entrances.
Some commuters said they would try to put the events out of their minds. “We have to live with this, not to think about it, especially when we’re underground,” Muscovite Tatyana Yerofeyeva told the Associated Press.
Plastic plaques hung in the two metro stations above rickety tables overflowing with flowers. The inscriptions promised permanent replacements.
“I feel the tension on the metro, nobody’s smiling or laughing,” said university student Alina Tsaritova, not far from Lubyanka station, one of the targets.
Five people of the 71 injured remain in critical condition after the attacks that were blamed on Chechen rebels. The preliminary investigation found that female suicide bombers detonated belts of explosives during the Monday morning rush hour.
The bombers – apparently helped by two Russian women and a man – boarded the metro early yesterday morning. One blew herself up at Lubyanka station, a short walk from Red Square, at 7.56am. The second bomber set off an explosive belt at 8.37am at Park Kultury station.
Video images of the three persons suspected of helping the suicide bombers have been circulated among police and law-enforcement agencies. Officials are also trying to identify the women bombers, and are tracing all female relatives of rebel leaders killed in two special operations in the north Caucasus this month.
According to yesterday's Kommersantnewspaper, the authorities were warned in advance about a possible suicide attack on the Moscow metro. Citing police sources, the paper said "three encoded telegrams" were distributed among law-enforcement bodies before Monday's blasts.
The warning said "Chechen terrorists" were planning explosions on "transport objects" in Moscow, Kommersantreported. The newspaper also interviewed a woman from the North Caucasus – unconnected to the bombings – who was arrested on the platform of Oxhotny Ryad station at 7.40am, minutes before the first bomb went off. The station is next to Lubyanka on the same line.
The woman recounted how she was taken to a police room inside the metro station. As her documents and Moscow residence permit were checked, the first explosion took place. A senior officer arrived minutes later and shouted at his colleagues from the doorway: “How could you let them [the suicide bombers] through when we had the information?”
There has been strong criticism of Russia’s law-enforcement agents over the failure to prevent Monday’s twin attacks. “They were too busy with corruption and intrigue to do their job properly,” Alexander Khinshtein wrote in the Moskovsky Komsomolets.
One columnist also lambasted Russia’s state-controlled federal television stations, which ignored the bombings for several hours yesterday while waiting for instructions from the Kremlin.
Ominously, there were also claims that the charismatic rebel ideologue Said Buryatsky – shot dead by federal forces on March 2nd – had prepared a squad of 30 suicide bombers to launch attacks on Russian targets.
Kommersant, citing investigators, said the bombers had been trained in a mosque in Turkey. Nine had already blown themselves up, but the others were said to be still at large.
The targets appeared to be have been carefully chosen to represent a symbolic attack on Russia’s government. The first bomb went off opposite the headquarters of Russia’s FSB anti-terrorism intelligence agency. Sources suggest the second bomb may have been intended for Oktyabrskaya station, next to Russia’s interior ministry.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility last night. However the head of the FSB, Alexander Bortnikov, said those responsible had links to the North Caucasus, the heavily Muslim region plagued by insurgency and where federal forces and their local proxies have been waging brutal counter-terrorist operations against suspected insurgents.
Prime minister Vladimir Putin cut short a visit to Siberia and returned to Moscow to declare that the “terrorists will be destroyed”.
However, the blasts – the most deadly attack in the Russian capital for six years – deal a serious blow to the Kremlin’s efforts to pacify the Muslim republics of Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan. – (Guardian service)