European Forum

Suicide attacks on Moscow metro stations leave dozens of people dead

On Monday (29 March) Moscow has suffered its deadliest terrorist attack in six years. Two suicide attacks during Monday morning's rush hour on Moscow’s metro stations have left at least 39 people dead and dozens more injured. The bombings – one at Lubyanka station that serves the nearby headquarters of the Federal Security Service (FSB), the former KGB – underscored the country's vulnerability to militants. The second bombing took place at another centrally situated station, the Park Kultury metro station. The attacks were carried out by two female bombers, which were said to come from the North Caucasus province of Chechnya.

Mourning day
Yesterday (30 March) Moscow held an official day of mourning for the victims of the suicide attack. Flags across Moscow flew at half-mast and sombre Muscovites laid flowers and lit candles at the stations hit by the blasts. Entertainment programs on radio and television were dropped. Makeshift memorials were set up at both stations. At Park Kultury, people left red carnations and tied white ribbons to a stand on the platform close to where the bomb went off. Mourning was official only in Moscow, but services for the dead were held at Russian Orthodox churches and other places of worship nationwide.

Local media reported that the police presence was stepped up at Moscow metro stations, and security was tightened on the networks in cities from St. Petersburg to Novosibirsk in Siberia. Nervous people returned to the metro yesterday, after it was closed down for a brief period.  "It was frightening, of course, to go by metro, but I don't really have any other way to travel. I live far away," said Oxana Orshan, a student.

Lots of casualties
A young injured woman died early on 30 March, which brought the death toll to 39, Andrei Seltsovsky, the chief of Moscow's health department, said on local television. He said that 71 other people were still in hospital, five of them in critical condition, and eight of the victims had been identified. Officials said the bombs that caused the carnage were packed with bolts and iron rods.

Strong message for Russian regime
The bombing sent a harsh signal to President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Some papers said the attack represented a failure of the government's security policy. They wrote that years of official propaganda had silenced Russians into thinking there was little to fear from the Islamist insurgency in the turbulent and mainly Muslim North Caucasus.

Putin, who came to power in 1999 by launching a war to crush separatism in the North Caucasus province of Chechnya, broke off a trip to Siberia on Monday, declaring "terrorists will be destroyed." No group has claimed responsibility for the bombings, but FSB chief Alexander Bortnikov said those responsible had links to the North Caucasus, where militant leaders have threatened to attack cities and energy pipelines elsewhere in Russia.

The attacks sparked fears of a broader campaign of attacks on Russia's heartland by insurgents based in the heavily Muslim provinces along Russia's southern border. In recent years, rebel attacks have been largely limited to the North Caucasus, although a bombing blamed on the insurgents killed 26 people on a Moscow-St. Petersburg train in November, 2009.

Sources: Reuters; RFE/RL; YouTube