RUSSIA: Russia has increased security in Moscow after what are thought to have been Chechen rebels brought carnage to the Russian capital this weekend with the suicide bombing of teenagers at a rock festival.
The President, Mr Vladimir Putin, cancelled an overseas trip to try to deal with the fear gripping the city's 10 million inhabitants.
The image which will have the Kremlin worried - besides those of 18 dead and 64 wounded - was that of the parents of festival-goers who turned up trying to get news of their loved-ones.
Unable to get information from the police and kept away from the mutilated bodies, dozens of parents gathered by the boundary fence of the Tushina aerodrome open-air concert, looking desperately for signs of their youngsters amid the 40,000 crowd.
"I keep trying to phone my son, but it just rings," said Olga, one frantic mother. "I hope it is only that the music is too loud."
These are Moscow's middle classes, the bedrock of support for Mr Putin's government. Until this weekend, the Chechen war was for them a faraway matter, a problem only for the minority whose sons were unable to get draft deferments. Not any more.
Everything changed shortly after 2 p.m. on a sweltering afternoon. The concert had been on for hours, but thousands of teenagers were still queuing to get in. On stage, to huge roars, the band Crematorium had just started their act.
A nondescript van pulled up outside the gates and two young women got out. They headed for the main entrance, where body searches of the youngsters and their bags were slowing entry.
In circumstances still being investigated, the women were refused entry; possibly they refused to be searched, possibly they had no tickets. Either way,they made a snap decision.
One ran up the road away from the entrance gate. A few seconds later the detonator on her explosives belt went off, blowing a huge chunk out of her left thigh just below the groin. The explosives belt itself did not go off.
Even so, three people were wounded and the bomber died.
Seconds later the other woman, embedding herself in the line of crowded teenagers, tripped her detonator and this time her belt, with half a kilogramme of explosives, went off with devastating results.
"It was just a big mess," said 17-year-old Alexandar Petrov, who was inside the venue when the explosions went off.
It will come as little consolation to the Kremlin that Moscow's emergency services performed well. Police and ambulance crews were quickly on the scene. The decision to carry on with the concert was also wise - it avoided mass panic.
The problem for the Kremlin though is that the summer concert season has no started and the Chechen rebels appear to have put Moscow's innocents firmly in their cross-hairs.
The timing of the attack was also significant: just the day before Mr Putin had announced a date for Chechen elections, supposedly the keystone to the official "normalisation" process for the province. This appears to be the rebel answer.
These elections follow a controversial referendum last March, when, say the authorities, four-fifths of voters backed a Russian government plan to give Chechnya limited autonomy but not the independence which rebels demand.
Meanwhile, the war, four years old next month, grinds on.
A military solution has eluded the government and the elections, without rebel support, seem like a blind alley. Short of opening talks with rebel leaders, there seems little the Kremlin can do in the coming weeks except bite its nails as the concert season gets into full swing.