Russia’s cities are bracing themselves for a fresh terrorist bombing campaign after two “black widow” suicide bombers launched a rush-hour attack on the Moscow metro killing 38 people and injuring 64.
Andrew Osborn in Moscow
Telegraph [UK]
29 Mar 2010
Officials said 24 were killed in the Lubyanka blast, while 12 were killed in the Park Kultury. Photo: AP
The double bombing on Monday was the deadliest terror attack inside Russia in six years and raised concerns that Islamist radicals were making good on repeated promises of a new offensive.
The first explosion shortly before 8am (0400 GMT) ripped through a train that had stopped in the Lubyanka station just below the headquarters of Russia’s FSB security service, the successor to the Soviet KGB. The second was just 40 minutes later in a carriage of a train on the platform at the Park Kultury metro station, named after Moscow’s Gorky Park.
The attacks, on one of the busiest subway systems in the world which carries 6.5 million commuters a day, were triggered by two women, who detonated belts around their waists packed with explosives and metal bolts.
CCTV footage from inside the metro showed they did not bother to cover their faces, while security sources suggest they may have detonated their bombs using their mobile phones.
Security sources said they were looking for two women “of Slav appearance” and a man who were caught on CCTV camera with the suicide bombers and are suspected accomplices.
Officials said the death toll could still rise as eight of the more than sixty wounded remain in a critical condition. Officials said 24 were killed in the Lubyanka blast, while 12 were killed in the Park Kultury. An additional two people died in hospital but officials did not specify which station they had come from.
The article continues at the Telegraph.
Known as Black Widows, having lost husbands in previous wars, these women are ready to sacrifice their lives in the name of Jihad
