A suicide bomber struck a busy railway station in southern Russia on
Sunday, killing herself and at least 15 others and wounding scores more,
officials said, in a stark reminder of the threat Russia is facing as
it prepares to host February’s Olympics in Sochi.
No one
immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing in Volgograd, but it
came several months after Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov called for
new attacks against civilian targets in Russia, including the Sochi
Games.
Suicide bombings have rocked Russia for years, but many have been
contained to the Caucasus, the centre of an insurgency seeking an
Islamist state in the region. Until recently Volgograd was not a typical
target, but the city formerly known as Stalingrad has now been struck
twice in two months — suggesting militants may be using the
transportation hub as a renewed way of showing their reach outside their
restive region.
Volgograd, which borders the Caucasus, is 900
kilometres (550 miles) south of Moscow and about 650 kilometres (400
miles) northeast of Sochi, a Black Sea resort flanked by the North
Caucasus Mountains.
The bombing highlights the daunting security
challenge Russia will face in fulfilling its pledge to make the Sochi
Games the “safest Olympics in history.” The government has deployed tens
of thousands of soldiers, police and other security personnel to
protect the games.
Through the day, officials issued conflicting
statements on casualties. Officials said that the suspected bomber was a
woman, but late Sunday the Interfax news agency quoted an unidentified
law enforcement officer as saying footage taken by surveillance cameras
indicated that the bomber was a man. There was no immediate confirmation
of that claim from any official sources.
The bomber detonated her
explosives in front of a metal detector just beyond the station’s main
entrance when a police sergeant became suspicious and rushed forward to
check her ID, officials said. The officer was killed by the blast, and
several other policemen were wounded.
“When the suicide bomber saw
a policeman near a metal detector, she became nervous and set off her
explosive device,” Vladimir Markin, the spokesman for the nation’s top
investigative agency, said in a statement. He added that the bomb
contained about 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of TNT and was rigged with
shrapnel.
Markin said that security controls prevented a far
greater number of casualties at the station, which was packed with
people at a time when several trains were delayed.
Markin said 13
people and the bomber were killed on the spot, and the regional
government said two other people later died at a hospital. About 40 were
hospitalized, many in grave condition.
The Interfax news agency
reported that the suspected bomber’s head was found at the site of
explosion, which would allow security agencies to quickly identify her.
Lifenews.ru,
a Russian news portal that reportedly has close links to security
agencies, said the attacker appeared to have been a woman whose two
successive rebel husbands had been killed by Russian security forces in
the Caucasus.
Female suicide bombers, many of whom were widows or
sisters of rebels, have mounted numerous attacks in Russia. They often
have been referred to as “black widows.”
In October, a female
suicide bomber blew herself up on a city bus in Volgograd, killing six
people and injuring about 30. Officials said that attacker came from the
province of Dagestan, which has become the centre of the Islamist
insurgency that has spread across the region after two separatist wars
in Chechnya.
As in Sunday’s blast, her bomb was rigged with shrapnel that caused severe injuries.
Chechnya
has become more stable under the steely grip of its Moscow-backed
strongman, who incorporated many of the former rebels into his feared
security force. But in Dagestan, the province between Chechnya and the
Caspian Sea, Islamic insurgents who declared an intention to carve out
an Islamic state in the region mount near daily attacks on police and
other officials.
Rights groups say that authorities’ tough
response involving arbitrary arrests, torture and killings of terror
suspects has fueled the rebellion.
The Kremlin replaced Dagestan’s
provincial chief earlier this year, and the new leader abandoned his
predecessor’s attempts at reconciliation and his efforts to persuade
some of the rebels to surrender in exchange for amnesty.
Security
camera images broadcast by Rossiya 24 television, showed Sunday’s moment
of explosion, a bright orange flash inside the station behind the
massive main gate followed by plumes of smoke.
“As soon as I walked up to the station entrance, all hell broke loose — people, flesh
Another
witness, Roman Lobachev, told Rossiya television that he was putting
his bags on a belt for screening when he heard the sound of an
explosion. “I heard a bang and felt as if something hit me on the head,”
said Lobachev who survived the attack with minor injuries.
The
bombing followed Friday’s explosion in the city of Pyatigorsk in
southern Russian, where a car rigged with explosives blew up on a
street, killing three.
Following Sunday’s explosion, the Interior
Ministry ordered police to beef up patrols at railway stations and other
transport facilities across Russia.
Russia in past years has seen a series of terror attacks on buses, trains and airplanes, some carried out by suicide bombers.
Twin
bombings on the Moscow subway in March 2010 by female suicide bombers
killed 40 people and wounded more than 120. In January 2011, a male
suicide bomber struck Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport, killing 37 people and
injuring more than 180.
Umarov, who had claimed responsibility
for the 2010 and 2011 bombings, ordered a halt to attacks on civilian
targets during the mass street protests against President Vladimir Putin
in the winter of 2011-12. He reversed that order in July, urging his
men to “do their utmost to derail” the Sochi Olympics which he described
as “satanic dances on the bones of our ancestors.”
A group
calling itself Anonymous Caucasus said in a statement Friday on the
Caucasus rebel website, kavkazcenter.com, that it would launch
cyber-attacks to avenge Russia’s refusal to acknowledge the 19th century
expulsion of Chirkassians, one of the ethnic groups in the Caucasus.
In
preparation for the Sochi games, Russian authorities have introduced
some of the most extensive identity checks and sweeping security
measures ever seen at an international sports event.
Anyone
wanting to attend the games that open on Feb. 7 will have to buy a
ticket online from the organizers and obtain a “spectator pass” for
access. Doing so will require providing passport details and contacts
that will allow the authorities to screen all visitors and check their
identities upon arrival.
The security zone created around Sochi
stretches approximately 100 kilometres (60 miles) along the Black Sea
coast and up to 40 kilometres (25 miles) inland. Russian forces include
special troops to patrol the forested mountains towering over the
resort, drones to keep constant watch over Olympic facilities and speed
boats to patrol the coast.
The security plan includes a ban on cars from outside the zone from a month before the games begin until a month after they end.
Comments