Suicide bomber strikes at Moscow airport
By Courtney Weaver in London and Isabel Gorst in Moscow
Published: January 24 2011 14:17 | Last updated: January 24 2011 18:22
A picture taken from Russian TV channel NTV shows paramedics taking a person injured by a blast towards an ambulance
A suicide bombing killed at least 35 people and injured more than 130 in the international arrivals hall of Moscows Domodedovo airport, the second major terrorist attack in Russia in a year.
Police put the capitals transport hubs on high alert and said they were stationing additional officers in public spaces to check for unattended baggage and parcels.
There were no immediate claims of responsibility. But Russian news agencies said authorities were investigating three men from the North Caucasus in connection with the attack.
There were chaotic scenes at the airport. Clouds of smoke filled the arrivals area as ambulance workers carried wounded people away. Television footage showed a mound of bodies lying on the terminal floor.
Mondays bombing follows a further deterioration in relations between the Kremlin and separatists in the North Caucasus region, where an Islamist insurgency is building. Last March, 40 people were killed after two female suicide bombers set off explosions in Moscows metro. In November 2009, 26 people were killed on board a high-speed train between Moscow and St Petersburg.
Russia cannot cope with the continued explosion of the Northern Caucasus. The so-called stability there is a myth, said Lilia Shevtsova, an analyst at Moscows Carnegie Centre.
Somehow we came to a very colonialist mentality that we shouldnt care about the Caucasus because nothing can be done
But the Moscow bombings logically implies that Russia has lost the war with terrorists.
President Dmitry Medvedev delayed a trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he was to deliver the opening speech on Tuesday. He vowed to track down and punish those behind the attack.
Security will be strengthened at large transport hubs, he wrote on Twitter. We mourn the victims of the terrorist attack at Domodedovo airport. The organisers will be tracked down and punished.
At Domodedovo, scores of ambulances were streaming in from Moscow, lining the curb and clogging the car park. Moscows mayor and the regional governor had been sent to the scene, Mr Medvedev said.
When the explosion rang out, panic broke out, everyone ran out of the hall, Sergey Gatuatulin, a journalist waiting in the arrivals hall, told Interfax. I saw a small flame and heard a big clap next to me, and covered my head and ran.
Britains Foreign Office advised UK citizens not to fly to Moscow and said it was working with Russian authorities to learn if any British nationals had been affected. German Chancellor Angela Merkel condemned the bombing as a cowardly attack while Barack Obama, US president, said he condemned this outrageous act of terrorism against the Russian people.
Russian news agencies cited a source who said police had been warned about the possibility of an attack on Domodedovo.
While the airport is considered Russias most modern transport hub, it has worked to rehabilitate its reputation after two suicide bombers were able to board flights at the airport in 2004 and blow up the plane mid-flight, killing all 90 people onboard.
Domodedovo said on its website it had delayed /held flights from China, Germany, Turkey, Vietnam and Armenia, and that Lufthansa and Air Berlin had delayed flights bound for Germany. At the airport, officials struggled to ensure that the airport was working normally, as passengers continued to arrive for their flights and airplanes could be heard taking off overhead.
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