A suicide bomber carrying a suitcase walked into Moscow's busiest airport and set off a huge explosion Monday, killing 35 people and wounding 180.
Other officials put the death toll at 35 and said about 180 people were injured in the explosion Monday afternoon. President Dmitry Medvedev said it looked like a terror attack and the state RIA Novosti news agency said the blast may have been set off by a suicide bomber.
President Dmitry Medvedev vowed to track down and punish those behind the bombing, which also injured about 130 people, including foreigners, during the busy late afternoon at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport.
Investigators work near the lifeless body of a man killed in an explosion at Domodedovo airport in Moscow, Monday, Jan. 24, 2011. An explosion ripped through the arrivals hall at Moscow’s busiest airport on Monday, killing many people. The Russian president called it a terror attack. AP
Dense smoke filled the hall and a fire burned along one wall.
"The explosion was right near me, I was not hit but I felt the shock wave — people were falling," said Yekaterina Alexandrova, a translator who was waiting in the crowded arrivals area to meet a client flying in from abroad.
Thick drops of blood were scattered across the snow-covered tarmac outside the arrivals hall, where traces of shrapnel were found.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev seen during a meeting to discuss an explosion at Domodedovo airport in the Gorki residence outside Moscow, Monday, Jan. 24, 2011. Medvedev ordered authorities to beef up security at Moscow’s two other commercial airports and other key transport facilities, including the subway system, the target of past terror attacks. He said the explosion demonstrated that security regulations had been breached. AP
"I heard a loud boom… we thought someone had just dropped something. But then I saw casualties being carried away," a check-in attendant who gave her name as Elena told Reuters at Domodedovo, which is some 22 km (14 miles) southeast of Moscow.
The Kremlin said Medvedev, who has called the insurgency in the north Caucasus the biggest threat to Russia’s security, delayed his departure for the Davos international business forum in Switzerland.
The rebels have vowed to take their bombing campaign from the violence-wracked north Caucasus to the Russian heartland, hitting transport and economic targets. They have also levelled threats at the 2014 Winter Olympics, scheduled for Sochi, a region they claim as part of their "emirate".
"Security will be strengthened at large transport hubs," Medvedev wrote on Twitter. "We mourn the victims of the terrorist attack at Domodedovo airport. The organisers will be tracked down and punished."
No group has yet taken responsibility for the attack, but dozens of Internet surfers, writing in Russian, praised the suicide bomber on unofficial Islamist site kavkazcenter.com.
A man wounded in a blast is evacuated from Domodedovo airport in Moscow, Monday, Jan. 24, 2011. An explosion ripped through the international arrivals hall at Moscow’s busiest airport on Monday, killing dozens of people and wounding scores, officials said. The Russian president called it a terror attack. AP
Russia’s rouble-denominated stock market MICEX fell by nearly two percent following the blast, which ripped through the arrivals hall, but traders said they expected little long-term impact.
"It (the blast) is moving the market in the short term, but there is no fundamental reason for the market to fall. If you remember, the market didn’t react strongly to (previous blasts)," said trader Alexei Bachurin from Renaissance Capital.
SPREADING INSURRECTION
Twitter users posted mobile video phone footage of dozens of people lying on the floor as thick smoke filled the hall and a fire burned along one wall.
Airport staff were shown using flash lights to pick their way through the chaotic scene taped off immediately after the blast. Later videos showed emergency workers wheeling injured people out of the terminal on stretchers.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who shares power in a ‘tandem’ arrangement with the less influential Medvedev, has staked his political reputation on quelling rebellion in the north Caucasus.
He launched a war in late 1999 in Chechnya to topple a secessionist government. That campaign achieved its immediate aim and helped him to the presidency months later; but since then insurgency has spread to neighbouring Ingushetia and Dagestan.
"It does not … bode well for Russian ties to the North Caucasus and is yet another sign that what Putin started in 1999 by invading the rebellious republic of Chechnya has come home to roost again in the Russian capital," said Glen Howard, president of the U.S. Jamestown Foundation research institution.
Ambulances are seen outside a terminal at Domodedovo airport, Moscow, Monday, Jan. 24, 2011. An explosion ripped through the international arrivals hall at Moscow’s busiest airport on Monday, killing dozens of people and wounding scores, officials said. The Russian president called it a terror attack. AP
"The bomb blast at Domodedevo will further strengthen the view among the Russian elite that Putin is losing control over security in the capital, which plays into the hands of his enemies."
Moscow recently saw riots involving thousands of Russian nationalists who attacked passersby of non-Slavic appearance, many of whom were from the north Caucasus.
Analysts say rebels are planning to increase violence in the run up to 2012 presidential elections, that may well see Putin returning to the presidency. Security has been tightened at Moscow’s other two airports, which will also receive diverted passengers who were flying towards Domodedovo, media reported.
Moscow suffered its worst attack in six years in March 2010 when two female suicide bombers from Dagestan set off explosives in the metro, killing 40 people. The worst incident involving north Caucasus rebels took place in 2004 when militants seized control of a school in Beslan. When Russian troops stormed the building in an attempt to end a siege, 331 hostages, half of them children, were killed.
