Female suicide bombers kill 37 in Moscow metro

[taetae]

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE62S0FM20100329
Reuters) - Explosions detonated by two female suicide bombers killed at least 37 people and injured 33 on two packed Moscow metro trains in the morning rush hour on Monday, officials said.

World

It was the worst attack in the Russian capital for six years.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the blasts but suspicion fell on groups from Russia's North Caucasus, where the Kremlin is fighting a growing Islamist insurgency.

The first blast just before 8 a.m. (12 a.m. ET) tore through the second carriage of a train as it stood at the Lubyanka metro station, close to the headquarters of Russia's main domestic security service FSB. It killed at least 23 people.

Another blast about 40 minutes later wrecked the second carriage of a train waiting at the Park Kultury metro station, killing 14 more people.

"Two female terrorist suicide bombers carried out these bombings," Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov told reporters at Park Kultury metro station.

WORKERS TREAT VICTIMS

Surveillance camera footage posted on the Internet showed bodies lying in Lubyanka station lobby and emergency workers treating victims.

By 0722 GMT, the rouble was 7 kopecks down at 34.20 versus the euro-dollar basket after falling to its lowest level since March 10 of 34.43 at the market opening, according to Reuters data.

The Russian stock markets were unfazed, however, edging up in early trade.

"It is a psychological moment. The sentiment is very bad, a lot of uncertainty. The market was overshort (in foreign currencies) so the reaction is explainable," said a dealer at a major Russian bank in Moscow.

Russian prosecutors said they had opened an investigation. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was being updated regularly on developments, a spokesman said.

The current death toll makes it the worst attack on Moscow since February 2004, when a suicide bombing killed at least 39 people and wounded more than 100 on a metro train.

Chechen separatists were blamed for that attack.

(Writing by Guy Faulconbridge and Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Andrew Dobbie)

 

[iaoish]

Saw it on the news this morning, this is from SKY.co.uk


More Than 30 Dead After Moscow Metro Blasts

Two suspected female suicide bombers have killed at least 37 people on Moscow's metro system during the height of rush-hour.

The first blast blew up a train carriage at the city's central Lubyanka station.

It is located underneath the offices of the Federal Security Service, the KGB's successor agency, and a mere half a kilometre from the Kremlin.

Authorities said 14 people on the train were killed, while 11 more died on the platform.

The second explosion went off some 45 minutes later at Park Kultury, which is the stop for Gorky Park, killing at least 12 people.

A further 73 people were injured in the attacks, officials said.

"I was in the middle of the train when somewhere in the first or second carriage there was a loud blast," a commuter outside Park Kultury told the RIA news agency.

"I felt the vibrations reverberate through my body."

The city's mayor Yuri Luzhkov said information from the FSB indicated there had been two female suicide bombers.

Vladimir Markin, spokesman for Russia's top investigative body, said one bomber was wearing a belt packed with plastic explosives.

He added the Park Kultury bomb was "equivalent to about 1.5kg of TNT".

Sky's Russia correspondent Amanda Walker said the attacks struck at the heart of the capital and at the busiest time.

"The underground is one of the deepest in the world. Actually getting access to the injured people and those affected will be an extremely difficult job," she said.

Reports said both stations were shut along with affected lines, while police were checking commuters' bags on other lines still open.

Suspicion has already fallen on Chechen rebels, who have been part of an insurgency in the North Caucasus region.

Walker added if the attacks were carried out by women, that was not unusual for Russia.

"Around seven or eight years ago there was a spate of attacks outside the Caucasus region - a significant number of the militants involved were female.

"In Russia, they became known as the 'black widows'.

"The women said at the time the reason they were doing what they were doing was because of their anger at the brutal wars that took place in the 90s."

The last confirmed terrorist attack in Moscow was in August 2004, when a suicide bomber blew herself up outside a city metro station.

That attack killed 10 people and was claimed by Chechen rebels.

Russian police set up barricades near the Lubyanka metro station in Moscow on March 29, 2010 after two explosions during the early morning rush hour in metro stations killed at least 34 people. Moscow chief prosecutor Yury Syomin said that suicide bombers, wearing belts with explosives, caused the twin blasts -- one at Lubyanka station and the other at Park Kulturi station. AFP

An emergencies services helicopter lands near the Lubyanka metro station in Moscow on March 29, 2010 after two explosions during the early morning rush hour in metro stations killed at least 34 people. Moscow chief prosecutor Yury Syomin said that suicide bombers, wearing belts with explosives, caused the twin blasts -- one at Lubyanka station and the other at Park Kulturi station. AFP

Russian police stand guard near the Lubyanka metro station in Moscow on March 29, 2010 after two explosions during the early morning rush hour in metro stations killed at least 34 people. Moscow chief prosecutor Yury Syomin said that suicide bombers, wearing belts with explosives, caused the twin blasts -- one at Lubyanka station and the other at Park Kulturi station. AFP

Russian riot police run near the Lubyanka metro station in Moscow on March 29, 2010 after two explosions during the early morning rush hour in metro stations killed at least 34 people. Moscow chief prosecutor Yury Syomin said that suicide bombers, wearing belts with explosives, caused the twin blasts -- one at Lubyanka station and the other at Park Kulturi station. AFP

A fire-fighter and Interior Ministry officers work near the entrance of the Lubyanka metro station in Moscow March 29, 2010. An explosion ripped through Lubyanka station in central Moscow at rush hour on Monday, killing at least 20 people and wounding 11 more, the Emergencies Ministry said. REUTERS

 

[NAMO]

They are picking a fight with the wrong people

 

[Dhadnot]

what are you talking about? they're in the 15th round already...lol at picking a fight. And the Russians have killed so many innocent Chechens.

 

[SeriouslyThug]

why do they always appear to be "islamist" rather than wahabiist and why should that even be mentioned as an attribute of the conflict when the conflict had nothing to do with islam from the beginning?





http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-chechnya-show-no-sign-of-ending-1933796.html


Why are we asking this now?

On Monday, 39 people died after two female suicide bombers, believed to be from Russia's troubled North Caucasus, blew themselves up on the Moscow underground. Russian intelligence believes that other suicide bombers, members of the same group, are out there, waiting to launch equally bloody and symbolic attacks on prestigious sites close to the Kremlin. Their leader, Doku Umarov, claimed responsibility.

On Wednesday, meanwhile, a spate of car bombings in Dagestan, near Chechnya, in the North Caucasus, killed at least 14 people, mainly police officers, and the Chechen Islamists who promptly claimed responsibility for these attacks are assumed to be closely linked to the Moscow bombers, if only because their attacks appear closely co-ordinated in timing. Among the atrocities linked to Chechnya are the Beslan school siege of 2004 and the Moscow theatre siege of 2002.

Was anyone expecting this?

If the Kremlin's security services were, the public was not. Russians have been fed a line that the Kremlin's macho tactics in crushing separatist movements in the North Caucasus, especially in Chechnya, have paid off and that the region has more or less settled down under the local rule of Kremlin appointees.

Is there an al-Qa'ida connection?

If there is one, it is not a key part of the jigsaw. The public in the West is so preoccupied by Osama bin Laden and his cohorts that people often forget the existence of equally militant but quite unrelated Muslim movements in other parts of the world that have nothing to do with the Middle East and which share with al-Qa'ida only a general feeling of resentment to what they see as Western, or European, imperialism. The militants from Chechnya and other neighbouring parts of the North Caucasus, such as Dagestan, have their own specific, historic grudges against Russia, even if the language that they use against the Kremlin can echo the Islamist lexicon that al-Qa'ida deploys against the United States and its allies.

Why might Chechens want to blow up Moscow?

The Chechens are not just another of Russia's grumbling subject nationalities. Tiny though their homeland is, the decision of the local leaders to demand all-out independence in the 1990s triggered the Russian military's worst conflict since the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. A ferocious and protracted war ensued, pitting a mountain guerilla force against a huge but lumbering and ill-disciplined Russian army. For the Kremlin, total victory became essential: it was to be the proof that post-communist Russia remained a great power, following the recent loss of eastern Europe. Were Chechnya to go, the fear was Russia itself might then unravel and Moscow be reduced to a city-state. But Russia's then leader, Boris Yeltsin, had no idea what forces he was unleashing.

The drawn-out nature of the war inflicted horrendous damage on Chechen society. Their capital, Grozny, was almost flattened before the Russian flag was raised over the city in February 2000. Society had fragmented in the meantime as mafia-like warlords took control. Meanwhile, Chechnya's suffering became a lightning rod for Wahhabi militants and other Islamist groups in the Arab world and who became increasingly drawn in. Their radical religious rhetoric began to find a receptive audience in the traumatised, half-destroyed country as a result of which the separatist movement has since taken on an increasingly religious dimension.

Russia also suffered from the war, not only in terms of the number of soldiers' coffins. The war encouraged and revivified all the forces opposed to Russia's brief flirtation with liberal democracy. There was a return to heavy-handed media censorship and the persecution of supposedly unpatriotic elements worsened. The power of the military and security apparatus grew. Russia emerged a less democratic country. Meanwhile, it has become clear that Russia's victory had a pyrrhic character, and that while Chechnya was bound and gagged for a while, its desire for revenge has remained.

Is this a blow to the Kremlin?

The Russian leadership is furious, and not simply because the attacks in Moscow are clearly intended to show nothing is beyond the militants' reach, not even the Kremlin. The present Prime Minister, Putin, rose to power on the back of the Chechen war, which catapulted him from the little-known head of the security services to Yeltsin's anointed successor. His initial appeal rested on being the man who gave the Chechens a bloody nose and thereby informed not only the tribal world of the North Caucasus but the rest of the world that Russia wasn't going to give up a centimetre of territory. His continuing authority, even now Dmitry Medvedev is President (Putin's old job), is linked to his having not only delivered Russia a degree of prosperity but also the "order" to which many Russians instinctively rally, which underpins the popular cult of tough tsars like Ivan the Terrible, not to mention Stalin (incidentally the creator of the Moscow underground). Putin knows he must convince Russians that he can handle any recrudescence of the threat from Chechnya and the other disaffected parts of the North Caucasus.

What does he do now?

That's the hard part. It was one thing to conquer Grozny in 2000 and install your own chieftain in power over a shell-shocked society. It's less clear what to do when the threat is more diffuse and not geographically containable. Like all capitals of large empires, Moscow is a multi-national city, and no amount of mob hostility to dark-skinned people using the underground or milling around in crowded markets is going to rid the city of a large non-Russian population.

Security has been stepped up in such places – but it is far from certain that the terrorists, if they intend a third strike, will go for such obvious sites. As the bomb attacks in Dagestan show, they can play cat-and-mouse, switching back and forth from Moscow to targets thousands of miles away. Were they to strike again, the location might be completely different. Putin must be hoping he has enough double agents and defectors at his disposal to infiltrate the terrorists. But again, the success of that strategy presumes the existence of a single operations centre, which is unlikely. This isn't the IRA, or Putin's own KGB, but a dispersed movement. The various militants may be united by a vague Islamic ideology but beyond that they are also rivals for power.

Does the West have anything to fear?

This is Russia's mess, not ours – a legacy of the Tsars' expansionists wars with the Ottoman Empire in the 18th century and of Russia's failure since then to fully co-opt or assimilate the tribal society that they conquered. The Chechen militants do not look kindly on the Western powers, which turned a blind eye to the Russian army's well-reported gross violations of civil rights in the conflict. Chechen fighters pop up as members of various Islamic terrorist groups around the world. But these men are essentially pirates and freelancers. The Chechens are not interested in taking on the world; rather, they want to settle scores with their Russian foes.

Is this conflict all about faith?

Yes...

* The militants claim Islam is one of their chief sources of inspiration

* Their paymasters include extreme Wahhabists more commonly associated with the Middle East

* Rightly or wrong, they see Russia as a 'Christian' foe

No...

* Historically Chechen Muslims have been a secular people

* To sceptics and opponents, their new-found Islamism appears to be slightly opportunistic

* Despite what many observers say, their real aim is simply independence

 

[Madison Kaine]

holy shyte