RUSSIA’S PRIME minister, Vladimir Putin, said last night that suicide bombers who carried out a deadly twin attack in the southern republic of Dagestan could have been part of the group behind the Moscow metro bombings on Monday.
Mr Putin said it was too early to tell whether there was an explicit link, but told Russia’s presidium: “I’m not ruling out that the same terrorists were involved.” He said any attack, regardless of where, was a “crime against Russia”.
Two hours before the Dagestan attack Chechen rebels claimed responsibility for two suicide bombings that killed 39 people in the Moscow metro and threatened further attacks in the Russian heartland.
Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov said in a video posted on Islamist rebel website www.kavkazcenter.com that he ordered the Moscow attacks in revenge for Mr Putin’s policies in the mainly-Muslim North Caucasus.
The latest suicide bombing took place early yesterday in Kizlyar, a town on the border with Chechnya. Two bombers killed at least 12 people – mostly police officers – and injured 28 others.
The first explosion took place at 8.45am Moscow time when a bomber drove his Niva car packed with explosives towards the headquarters of the local interior ministry. As police officers approached the car, a massive bomb concealed in the boot exploded, killing two of them, injuring a third and killing a woman passer-by.
The second blast occurred 20 minutes later when a second bomber disguised as a police officer walked up to rescue workers and civilians at the scene of the first explosion and blew himself up. Mobile phone footage posted on www.life.ru caught the moment of the second bombing which, said Dagestan’s interior ministry, killed five police officers, including the district police chief and a senior investigator from the prosecutor’s office.
Television pictures from the scene showed a large crater in the road surrounded by gutted vehicles, bricks and glass. A body lay in the street, and windows had been blown out at a school.
“It was terrible. There are body parts of the victims lying in the street. The blast lifted the roof off the school, blew out all the glass from windows and left the school buildings with cracks,” a witness, Tatiana Batzina, told RIA Novosti news agency. “Colleagues who live on the street told me a car blew up near the school. Two other vehicles were driving past. The people inside were badly injured. A huge crowd of people gathered at the scene. As several ambulances arrived, there was another explosion.”
Like Monday’s Moscow blasts, which killed 39 people and injured more than 70, yesterday’s attacks appear to confirm fears that Russia is in the grip of a major campaign by Islamist insurgents, who are demanding a pan-Caucasian Islamic emirate. – (Guardian service/Reuters)