A shrapnel-filled bomb believed strapped to a
suicide attacker ripped apart a commuter train Friday near Chechnya, killing 42
people and wounding nearly 200 in what Russia's president called an attempt to
disrupt weekend parliamentary elections.
The blast near this city in southern Russia was the latest in a series of
suicide bombings and other attacks that have foiled security measures and killed
more than 275 people in and around the rebellious region of Chechnya and in
Moscow in the past year.
The remains of the suspected bomber were found with grenades still attached
to his legs, Federal Security Service chief Nikolai Patrushev said. Three women
also were involved in the attack — two who jumped from the train just before the
blast, and one who was gravely injured and unlikely to survive, he said.
Authorities suspect other accomplices may have been watching from cars near
the site of the blast, which threw passengers from the train and sent its second
car crashing onto its side, trapping victims beneath the buckled wreckage.
The explosion tore through the train around 8 a.m., a rush-hour attack that
seemed calculated to kill and injure as many people as possible. The train was
about 500 yards from the station at Yessentuki, 750 miles south of Moscow, and
officials said many passengers were students from local schools and
universities.
Thirty-five people died at the scene of the blast and seven others in
hospitals, a Stavropol region emergency official said. He said that authorities
had identified 30 of the dead and that 151 people remained hospitalized late
Friday.
It was unclear whether the suicide attacker was included in the death toll.
The Federal Security Service said that along with the remains of the
suspected bomber, unexploded grenades and remnants of a bag believed to have
carried the bomb were found. The bomb was filled with shrapnel, prosecutors told
Russian media.
Southern Russia's chief prosecutor, Sergei Fridinsky, suggested links to the
other bombings, some of which were carried out by women. He said the explosives
were similar to those found in belts worn by suicide bombers in some earlier
attacks, most of which were blamed on Chechen rebels.
"We will find those who did it," said Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov,
calling the attackers "beasts" as his voice trembled in televised comments. "The
earth will burn under their feet."
President Vladimir Putin called the attack "an attempt to destabilize the
situation in the country on the eve of parliamentary elections" Sunday.
As with all attacks that Russian authorities suspect are linked to Chechnya,
Putin equated the blast with the "international terrorism" that he said "has
challenged many countries and continues to represent a serious threat for our
country."
"It is a ruthless, serious, treacherous enemy," he said.
Condolences flooded in from around the world. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi
Annan expressed dismay at the "vicious attack," and European Commission
President Romano Prodi said Russians should not let the bombing keep them from
voting Sunday.
"We resolutely condemn this latest terrorist act," U.S. State Department
spokesman Adam Ereli said.
Representatives of Aslan Maskhadov, a rebel leader and former Chechen
president who considers himself the rightful head of Chechnya, denied
responsibility for the explosion in a statement distributed to news media.
"We repeat that the Chechen government is guided by the principles of
international humanitarian law," the statement said. "We therefore condemn any
acts of violence that directly or indirectly target the civilian population
anywhere in the world."
The attack was the second on the railway line linking the cities of
Kislovodsk and Mineralniye Vody in the tense region that surrounds Chechnya.
Six people were killed in two blasts on the same line in September. No group
claimed responsibility for those attacks.
The deadly bombings of the past year — and a Chechen rebel hostage-taking
raid on a Moscow theater in October 2002 — have exposed the inability of Russian
authorities to ward off suicide attacks, a tactic that was rarely used by
Chechen rebels during the first separatist war in the region in 1994-96.
A suicide truck-bomb attack last December destroyed the headquarters of
Chechnya's Moscow-backed government and killed 72 people, and another killed 60
at a government compound in the region in May. Later that month, a woman blew
herself up at a religious ceremony, killing at least 18 people.
In June, a female suicide attacker detonated a bomb near a bus carrying
soldiers and civilians to a military airfield in Mozdok, a major staging point
for Russian troops in Chechnya, killing at least 16 people. A truck bomb in
August, also in Mozdok, killed 50 people at a military hospital.
In Moscow, a double suicide bombing at a rock concert in July killed the
female attackers and 15 other people, and an explosive device a woman brought
into downtown Moscow less than a week later killed an expert who tried to defuse
it.
Russian forces have been bogged down in Chechnya since 1999, when they
returned following rebel raids on a neighboring Russian region and a series of
deadly bombings that Russia blamed on the militants. Russian troops had
withdrawn from Chechnya in 1996 after a 20-month war that ended in de facto
independence for the devastated region.
