Suicide Attacks in Moscow

Phenom

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Sad News,
I was under the impression that the Russians have managed to neutralize the Chechen movement in the recent years, Shocking they managed to launch an attack in the heart of Russia.
 

Rage

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Here is a list of some painful videos moments after the explosion:







Watch the resolve on that man's face at 0:39. They will not let shrub's get them down.


 
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ajtr

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Beginning of jihad at heart of Russia?

MOSCOW: After a lull of several years, the spectre of militant attacks has returned to haunt Moscow and fuelled fears of a holy war in the heart of Russia by Islamist rebels from its Northern Caucasus region.

Thirty-eight people were killed on Monday in twin suicide attacks carried out by female suicide bombers in the morning rush hour, officials said, in the worst such attack in the Russian capital for over half a decade.

The head of the Federal Security Service Alexander Bortnikov said they appeared linked to Northern Caucasus militant groups who have waged an insurgency against the pro-Kremlin local authorities. The bombings came after warnings published on militant websites by Islamist leader Doku Umarov from the Caucasus region of Chechnya that Moscow would be the rebels' next target.

Andrei Malashenko, an expert at the Carnegie Centre, said the bombings could signal the beginning of a jihad, or holy war in the heart of Russia. "I would not rule out that they have started the jihad that they have been announcing recently quite regularly since the end of December," Malashenko said.

The US IntelCenter organisation — which monitors statements by militant groups — also pointed to Umarov's involvement.

"The most likely group behind the twin suicide bombings in the Moscow subway today is the Caucasus Emirate led by Doku Umarov," the agency said in a statement.

In an interview published on February 14 on the Kavkazcenter website, an unofficial mouthpiece for rebels, Umarov warned that rebels would move their actitivites from the Caucasus to central Russia.

"The blood will not just be spilled in our towns and villages. The war will come to their towns," Umarov said.

Amid a low-level insurgency in the North Caucasus, rebels regularly target police stations and local officials in shootings and suicide bombings that are barely mentioned by Russian state media. "This is directly linked to the situation in the North Caucaus," Grigory Shvedov, the chief editor of the web site www.caucasianknot.info, said.
 

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'In Moscow, we live on a powder keg'


MOSCOW: Ambulance sirens screamed, emergency helicopters touched down and the mobile phone network crashed — after a lull of several years suicide bombings had returned to haunt Moscow.

Dozens of orange and red emergency trucks blocked Moscow's Lubyanka Square, headquarters of Russia's FSB security services, parking above the scene of the first metro blast, just a short walk from the Kremlin.

Hundreds of people were milling about dazed, some sobbing loudly, after being forced out of the metro at Park Kultury station, the site of the second bomb attack.

The twin blasts on the metro system — blamed on female suicide bombers — killed at least 38 people. The explosions were the deadliest attacks in Moscow since 2004 when the bombing of a metro line killed 41 and wounded 250 people. Since then, Moscow had been spared such attacks and such scenes of panic and shock in the heart of the city centre belonged to memory.

But soon enough, frightened, frustrated but ultimately stoical, thousands of Russian commuters poured out of their capital's metro after the twin bombings. As they emerged from at the height of the morning rush hour, Muskovites found traffic jams, taxi drivers doubling their prices, and a mobile phone system under severe strain.

"I'm scared. In Moscow we live like on a powder keg," Yevgeniya Popova said near the Lubyanka metro station. Many Muscovites simply soldiered on, looking for alternate routes to work. Some pressed cellphones to their ears as they tried to get through to explain they would be late, to do business, or to make sure loved ones were safe.

Next to Popova, a man in his thirties who was visiting Moscow frowned with frustration after half an hour trying in vain to reach his brother. "I'm not scared, but I feel like we're at war," he said. "My only feeling is to take vengeance. On whom? I don't know yet. But it cannot remain unpunished."

Ekho Moskvy radio said two women wearing Muslim-style headscarves were beaten by four or five passengers on a metro train after the bombings. Russia is plagued by a strong undercurrent of bias against ethnic minorities from the Caucasus and Central Asia.
Russian media said security agencies were blocking mobile phone connections in the centre of Moscow after reports that the bombs were detonated with the help of cellphones. But authorities later said the bombers had blown themselves up.
 

ajtr

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Victims' kin cry revenge as body bags hauled out


MOSCOW: About half an hour after the first explosion in Lubyanka station, a second blast went off in a carriage of a train on the platform at the Park Kultury metro station, also in central Moscow and named after the iconic Gorky Park that lies over the river.

Rescuers grimly hauled out body bags from the ornate stations in the depths of one of the world's biggest underground systems, amid calls for bloody revenge from victims' relatives.

Footage broadcast on state television showed dazed passengers in the metro station holding their heads in despair and corpses strewn on the ground as dust and smoke swirled through the tunnel.

Security services kept a tight cordon around the Lubyanka metro station. "According to preliminary information, both blasts have been executed by female suicide bombers," said an FSB spokesman.

Russian news agencies said body parts suspected to come from the two women had been found at the two stations and had been sent away for laboratory analysis.

Alexandra Antonova, an editor for the RIA-Novosti news agency, said she had just got on the train leaving the Lubyanka station when the explosion shook her carriage.

"The loud boom stuffed up my ears. But the train didn't stop. Nobody had time to understand what had happened," Antonova said.

The emergency situations ministry said the toll has reached 38 after some victims died in hospital, not including the bombers. A total of 64 people were wounded.

Around two-thirds of the dead were killed in the Lubyanka blast although precise figures for the breakdown of the toll were not available.

Moscow's chief prosecutor Yuri Syomin told reporters on Lubyanka Square, next to the metro station of the same name, that the force of the blasts had an equivalent of about 3kgs of TNT explosives each.

FSB director Alexander Bortnikov said the blasts appeared linked to militant groups in the Northern Caucasus and the suspected bombers also had connections with the regions. There was no immediate claim of responsibility but the group of Chechen militant Doku Umarov is supposed to be behind the carnage.
 

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Putin, Medvedev vow to track down & destroy attackers


KRASNOYARSK/MOSCOW: Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin vowed on Monday to destroy those responsible for the Moscow metro suicide attacks, even as President Dmitry Medvedev said the country will fight terrorism to the end.

"A crime that is terrible in its consequences and heinous in its manner has been committed," Putin said at the start of a video conference with senior emergencies officials. "I am confident that law enforcement bodies will spare no effort to track down and punish the criminals. Terrorists will be destroyed," said Putin, who was on a visit to the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk.

Reacting to the attack, President Medvedev said that Russia will fight terror without hesitation and to the end, and ordered security to be stepped up on transport across the country.

"The policy to suppress terrorism in our country and the fight with terrorism will be continued," Russian news agencies quoted Medvedev as telling an emergency meeting convened after the twin blasts. "We will continue the operation against terrorists without hesitation and until the end," he added.
 

Dark_Prince

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Sad, very sad! Again Coward jihadis use women to attack innocent civilians! They hv messed up with wrong people, Chechnya is already leveled to the ground; now these jihadis will be hunted in the ural mountains and cut into pieces by spetsnaz! (I wish Russians all the Best in getting revenge, cuz revenge is sweet!)
 

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Moscow in mourning, vows to avenge metro bombings



MOSCOW (AFP) – Moscow held a day of mourning Tuesday for the 38 victims of twin rush-hour suicide bombings on packed metro trains, as Russian leaders pledged to hunt down and wipe out those behind the attacks.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin vowed those responsible for Monday's bombings would be "destroyed" as authorities pointed the finger at militants from the Northern Caucasus for the deadliest attack in the Russian capital for half a decade.

President Dmitry Medvedev, while visiting the site of one of the bombings to lay a wreath of red roses, pledged "we will find and wipe out" those behind the blasts, calling them "wild beasts".

The first explosion shortly before 8:00 am (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.

About 40 minutes later, a second explosion went off in a carriage of a train on the platform at the Park Kultury metro station, named after Moscow's iconic Gorky Park.

Officials said the attacks were carried out by women wearing belts packed with explosives, marking a return of the so-called "Black Widows" who terrorized Moscow a decade ago with a string of attacks.

"Body parts of two terrorists -- female suicide bombers -- were found at the scenes of the blasts," FSB chief Alexander Bortnikov said in a televised meeting at the Kremlin.

"According to preliminary information, these people had links to places of residence in the Northern Caucasus," he added.

Bortnikov said the bombers' belts were packed with the explosive hexogen and metal shrapnel.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that foreign involvement in the attacks had not been ruled out.

"We all know very well that clandestine terrorists are very active on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan," the Interfax news agency quoted Lavrov as saying in Canada at a Group of Eight ministers' meeting.

"We know that several attacks have been prepared there, to be carried out not only in Afghanistan, but also in other countries. Sometimes, these journeys go as far as the (Russian) Caucasus."

Russian police are searching for two women who accompanied the suicide bombers, plus a man who may also have been an accomplice, after identifying them and the bombers through surveillance footage, Interfax reported citing a security source. Related article: 'Black Widows' snare Russia in new web of fear

Emergency officials said the death toll had reached 38, not including the bombers. Another 64 people were wounded, including a woman from the Philippines and two women from Malaysia who were released from hospital after treatment.

Putin -- who cut short a visit to Siberia to return to Moscow -- visited some of those injured in a central Moscow hospital on Monday evening.

He earlier warned that "law enforcement agencies will do everything to find and punish the criminals... The terrorists will be destroyed."

Western leaders offered their condolences to Russia, and US President Barack Obama pledged Washington would "help bring to justice those who undertook this attack" while Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called trrrorism a "common enemy". Related article: West pledges help after 'hateful' Moscow attacks

"Whether you are in a Moscow subway or a London subway or a train in Madrid or an office building in New York, we face the same enemy," Clinton said in an interview with the Canadian network CTV.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the so-called "Caucasus Emirate" group led by Chechen militant Doku Umarov has repeatedly warned in recent months it was planning to strike the capital.

Umarov's group claimed responsibility for last November's bombing of a passenger train that killed 28 people.

Lubyanka Square is home to the Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor to the Soviet KGB secret police, and still housed in the notorious building where dissidents were interrogated and shot in Joseph Stalin's purges.

The Moscow metro continued working despite the disaster, with only one line temporarily shut down, and by the end of the day Lubyanka station had reopened to passengers with only minimal damage to its marble walls.

The Moscow city government declared Tuesday would be a day of mourning.

Monday's explosions were the deadliest suicide attacks in Moscow since 2004 when the bombing of a metro train killed 41, part of a string of attacks carried out by Chechen militants. Related article: Tears and rage as bombers strike heart of Russia

Chechnya has seen rising violence in recent months as pro-Kremlin regional authorities seek to clamp down on an Islamist insurgency that has also spread to the neighbouring majority-Muslim regions of Ingushetia and Dagestan.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/russiaattacks
 

sandeepdg

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The Chechen movement has again reared its ugly head and the consequences have been tragic for the Russian people ! The FSB believes the Chechen group headed by Doku Umarov to be behind these attacks. Even after decades of action the Chechen militants, this incident shows that they still have the capability to strike at the heart of Russia with impunity. Moscow is probably the only capital city of a major world power that has been hit by deadly terrorist attacks in the past decade. And this was not first time when the Moscow subway was targeted, there were two attacks on the same transportation system in 2004 that claimed an equal number of lives. I hope the Russian authorities crush those responsible with an iron fist ! My condolences to those who lost their lives in this attack , may their soul rest in peace.
 

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Terrorists will be 'dragged out from the sewers' - Putin

Finding the organizers of the terrorist attacks in the Moscow metro is a matter of honor for the security agencies, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said during questions at a conference on transport security on Tuesday.

Two deadly suicide bombings hit the Moscow metro on Monday, killing at least 39 people and injuring more than 70. The blasts ripped through the rush-hour Lubyanka and Park Kultury stations with an interval of about 40 minutes.

"We know that they are lying low. But it is a matter of honor for the security services to drag them out from the bottom of the sewers into the light of God" Putin said. "I am convinced that this will happen."

This is not the first time that Putin has used sewage analogies in response to terrorists. In 1999, during his first term as prime minister under then president Boris Yeltsin, he famously threatened to "wipe them out in their outhouse."

The phrase did much to establish Putin's "tough guy" image, on which much of his popularity is based.

On Tuesday, Putin also praised the work of the rescue services at the site of the explosions.

"I want to thank the fire, rescue and medical services, and anyone who helped people, for your professional, well-managed work" he said. "It was without a doubt carried out at a highly professional level."

He also promised to take steps to improve Russian security.

"We must and will think about the development of CCTV systems. We will improve the technical means of detecting explosives, rescue systems and ways of warning and informing citizens," he said

"I think it's clear to all that this is not a matter of the money and recourses we are prepared to put aside for solving this problem. It's a matter how effectively we can find a solution."

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20100330/158366107.html
 

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Pakistan roots to Moscow attack?

ISLAMABAD - Monday's twin suicide attacks by female bombers in the Moscow metro system in which at least 38 people were killed and 64 injured were most likely planned and executed by people trained in Pakistan's tribal areas.

The head of the Federal Security Service (FSB - formerly the KGB), under whose headquarters the attacks took place, immediately pointed a finger at insurgents linked to the North Caucasus, saying the assumption was based partly on fragments of the suicide bombers' bodies.

"Our preliminary theory is that these terrorist attacks were carried out by terror groups linked to the North Caucasus region," Aleksandr Bortnikov said in reference to Muslim rebels waging a




war of independence in Chechnya, a semi-autonomous region in the Russian Federation.

Russia last year declared an end to counter-terrorism operations in Chechnya that had been ongoing for over a decade, but confidence in that declaration has been shaken by a recent spike in violence, reports RFE/RL's Russian Service.

Well-placed contacts within jihadi circles confirm to Asia Times Online that the attackers were in all probability from the North Caucasus, but add that they could have been trained in Pakistan as part of a broad plan that al-Qaeda has been working on for many years - to stir unrest across Central Asia. The insiders who spoke to Asia Times Online point out that Monday's attack could signal a new salvo in this battle. The last metro attacks in Moscow were in 2004, when 40 people were killed in two separate incidents.

The al-Qaeda vision is to use the separatist struggle in Chechnya as a rallying point for a broader fight against Russia and its allies in Central Asia. In this new war it is envisaged that Chechens will be joined by, among others, ethnic communities of Uzbeks, Uyghurs and Tajiks under one front to establish an Islamic emirate of Khurasan.

As top al-Qaeda ideologues see it, the map of ancient Khurasan (comprising the present Central Asian republics, parts of Afghanistan, parts of Iran and parts of Pakistan) would be revived. Victory here would then lead to the "end-of-time battles" in the Middle East.

Seeds planted in Afghanistan
Preparations for Khurasan began in the late 1990s in Afghanistan when Taliban leader Mullah Omar provided refuge to fighters from Central Asian Islamic movements in Uzbekistan, Chechnya and Tajikistan. Militants from the East Turkestan Islamic Movement were also accepted. This is an Uyghur organization that advocates the creation of an independent Islamic state of East Turkestan in what is currently the Xinjiang region of China.

Initially, these groups tried to fight their wars of liberation from bases in Afghanistan, but al-Qaeda worked hard to convince them of the need for a joint strategy throughout Central Asia. In the "war and terror" years after the Taliban were thrown from power by the United States-led invasion of 2001, thousands of Central Asian militants gathered in the border areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan, but their participation in the Afghan resistance was minimal.

This became a serious point of friction between Taliban commander Haji Nazeer and Uzbek militants who had settled in Pakistan's South Waziristan tribal area. The discord turned bloody in 2007 when Nazeer's men killed hundreds of Uzbek militants. The Uzbeks, with about 2,500 fighters, were the largest group of foreign militants in the area.

Although the Taliban were upset that these militants were not pulling their weight in Afghanistan, it was impressed on them by al-Qaeda that bigger things were planned for the foreigners.

Asia Times Online has written how control of all foreign fighters in North Waziristan and South Waziristan was generally in the hands of Arabs, who are astute and trained commanders. (See The Pakistani road to German terror Asia Times Online, September 7, 2007.) For example, Abu Nasir commands the Uyghurs and Pakistanis; Abu Akash looks after the Uzbeks and Tajiks while Abu Hanifah takes care of Turkish Kurds, Bosnians and Chechens.

After 2007, foreign fighters began to arrive in Pakistan in increasing numbers as al-Qaeda had consolidated its position in the tribal border areas. Most of the jihadis came from Turkey, where there are large Chechen and Uzbek communities.

After mid-2009, the fighters were able to travel through Iran as al-Qaeda struck a deal with the Iranian Jundallah militant group to allow them transit through restive Sistan-Balochistan province in the southwest. The fighters were also able to return via the same route.

Conceivably, this was the route taken by Monday's suicide bombers after receiving training in the al-Qaeda camps that dot the border areas.
 

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What the Moscow blasts mean

The twin bomb blasts in Moscow's crowded metro that killed 38 people and wounded 65 during the morning rush hours on Monday were a horrible reminder of continuing Islamist violence in Russia's troublesome North Caucasus. Female suicide bombers carried out the strikes — a trademark tactic of Chechen terrorists. One of the extremist websites claimed the attacks were staged by Chechen militants. Since 1999, when Vladimir Putin launched a second military campaign to crush separatism in the overwhelmingly Muslim-majority republic, suicide bombers have killed hundreds of people in attacks in Moscow and other Russian cities. In 2004, one such attack in the Moscow metro claimed 41 lives. After Chechnya was pacified in the mid-2000s, violence spread to the neighbouring North Caucasus regions, where massive poverty, unemployment, and rampant corruption provided fertile ground for extremism. While the Chechnya war was waged for independence from Russia, today's insurgency is a patently jihadist movement. In 2007, Chechnya's self-proclaimed ‘Emir of the Caucasus,' Doku Umarov, proclaimed the goal of liberating all of Russia's Muslim regions. Security experts do not rule out the latest deadly attacks being the terrorists' revenge for recent successful counter-insurgency operations in the North Caucasus, during which several terrorist leaders, including al Qaeda-linked Arab warlord Abu Haled, extremist ideologist Said Buryatsky, and head of the Caucasus Emirate's Sharia Court, Anzor Astemirov, were killed.

President Dmitry Medvedev has vowed to fight terrorism “without hesitation, to the end.” At the same time, the Kremlin has shifted the emphasis away from a security crackdown to promoting economic development, rooting out corruption, and clamping down on economic crime. In January, Mr. Medvedev merged seven Muslim regions in the North Caucasus into a new federal district and appointed one of Russia's most competent administrators, Alexander Khloponin, to be in charge, with the rank of Deputy Prime Minister. Explaining his move, Mr. Medvedev said that the region's problems “lie in economic weakness and the absence of prospects for the people living there” and that these problems should be in the focus of anti-terrorist efforts. India, a major victim of terrorism, condemned the attacks, with External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna expressing solidarity with Russia and underlining that New Delhi “condemned terrorism in all forms and countries.” Ripples from the Moscow metro blasts may extend beyond Russia and provide a moral boost to terrorists round the world. It is therefore imperative that the international community steps up cooperation in the war against terrorism on all fronts.
 

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Dagestan explosions 'kill police'

Two police officers have been killed in two explosions in the town of Kizlyar in Russia's restive North Caucasus republic of Dagestan, reports say.

Russian news agencies said the second blast came 20 minutes after the first.

This comes two days after 39 people were killed in two suicide bombings on the Moscow Metro, for which officials have blamed North Caucasus militants.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has called on security forces to "scrape from the sewers" those responsible.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8596084.stm
 

Rage

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Russia's response will, when it happens, be brutal. The Russians are not known for 'proportionate responses'. The acceptance of the loss of some 300 individuals to get to the 32 captors during the Beslan hostage crisis is a case in point. God save the perps when the Great Bear decides to claw their eyes out.
 

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London, April 1 (IANS) A Chechen militant group has claimed responsibility for the bombings at two Moscow metro stations that killed 39 people, media reports said.

In a video message posted on a Chechen rebel website, militant leader Doku Umarov said his group was behind Monday's double suicide bombings on the Moscow Metro, BBC reported Wednesday.

The rebel, who styles himself as the Emir of the Caucasus Emirate, said attacks on Russian soil would continue.

He said that he had personally ordered the attacks to avenge the killings of 'poor Chechens' by Russian security forces in February and warned Russia to prepare for more.

He said the civilians were 'massacred by Russian occupiers' near the town of Arshty Feb 11 as they were gathering wild garlic to feed their families.

The message came as Russia buried the first victims of Monday's attacks.

Russian investigators have said they believe two female suicide bombers were linked to militants in the North Caucasus.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has called on the security forces to 'scrape from the sewers' those responsible.

http://in.news.yahoo.com/43/20100401/884/twl-chechen-rebels-claim-responsibility.html
 

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Twelve killed by twin bombings in Russia's Dagestan


At least 12 people, including a top local police official, have been killed by two suicide bombings in Russia's North Caucasus republic of Dagestan.
A car bomb was detonated at about 0830 (0430 GMT) outside the offices of the local interior ministry and the FSB security agency in the town of Kizlyar.
Another bomber then blew himself up 20 minutes later as a crowd gathered.
Russia is on alert after double suicide bombings on the Moscow Metro on Monday morning, which left 39 people dead.
First funerals of some of the victims took place on Wednesday.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has called on the security forces to "scrape from the sewers" those responsible for the Moscow attacks. Investigators say they believe the bombers were linked to militants in the North Caucasus.

Yet another terrorist act has been committed. I do not rule out that it is one and the same gang at work
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin
At a government meeting following Wednesday's bombings in Dagestan, Mr Putin condemned the "terrorist act" and said he did "not rule out that it is one and the same gang at work".
President Dmitry Medvedev said the two sets of bombings were "links of the same chain".
A militant Islamist group led by a Chechen rebel on Wednesday denied responsibility for the blasts.
"We did not carry out the attack in Moscow, and we don't know who did it," Shemsettin Batukaev, a spokesman for the Caucasus Emirate organisation led by Doku Umarov, told Reuters by telephone in Turkey.
The spokesman added that the group had planned attacks on economic targets inside Russia, but not against civilians.
Last month, Doku Umarov warned that his fighters' "zone of military operations will be extended to the territory of Russia... the war is coming to their cities".
The BBC's Richard Galpin in Moscow says that although no-one has yet claimed responsibility for either of this week's attacks, both bear the hallmarks of previous suicide bombings carried out by Islamist militants from the North Caucasus.
'Cancerous tumour'
In Wednesday's attacks, the first bomber detonated about 200kg of explosives when police tried to stop his car as he drove into the centre of Kizlyar, Dagestani Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev said.



First Moscow, now Dagestan. President Dmitry Medvedev has described the attacks as "links in the same chain" - one which leads to an ongoing Islamist insurgency in the North Caucasus.
The Moscow Metro bombings were the first attacks in the Russian capital in six years. In the North Caucasus, though, suicide bombings by Islamist militants are increasingly common - and police and local government officials are the usual target.
A recent report says more than 900 people died in violence in the region last year alone, which included 15 suicide attacks.
North Caucasus: At a glance
"Traffic police followed the car and almost caught up - at that time the blast hit," he told local television.
As police, emergency services personnel and residents gathered at the scene, a suicide bomber wearing a police uniform approached and blew himself up, killing among others the town's chief of police, Col Vitaly Vedernikov, Mr Nurgaliyev added.
Mobile phone footage posted on the internet afterwards showed the moment of the second blast, with officials walking past a damaged building before a loud bang rings out and smoke rises in the distance.
A total of nine police officers were among the dead, the investigative committee of Russian prosecutors said in a statement. Twenty-three people were injured.
Mr Nurgaliyev later ordered police to increase security at official buildings across the republic, as well as at places where crowds gather, including schools, colleges and cinemas.
Dagestani President Magomedsalam Magomedov said the explosions in Moscow and Kizlyar were linked and he vowed to "eliminate" the perpetrators, Russia's Interfax news agency reported.
Kizlyar is close to Dagestan's border with Chechnya, where Russian forces have fought two wars against separatists since 1994 that claimed more than 100,000 lives and left the republic in ruins.
Chechnya has in recent years been more peaceful, but the fighting has spread to Dagestan and Ingushetia, where a violent Islamist insurgency is growing.

Correspondents say poverty, unemployment and the brutal tactics of the security forces have been factors in driving young men into the ranks of Islamist rebel groups, which want to drive the Russians out.
President Medvedev recently said separatists had spread through the North Caucasus "like a cancerous tumour" and earlier this year appointed a deputy prime minister to oversee the troubled region.
He told security officials on Tuesday that the militants' goal was the "destabilisation of the situation in the country, the destruction of civil society, and to sow fear and panic among the population".
Mourning
On Tuesday, Russians observed a day of mourning for those killed in the suicide bombings on Moscow's Metro, carried out by two women said to have links to the North Caucasus.


Families of the Moscow victims have been expressing anger at their loss


The first bomb tore through a carriage of a train at Lubyanka station - beneath the headquarters of the Federal Security Service (FSB) - as it stood waiting for commuters during the morning rush hour.
The second explosion, six stops away at Park Kultury, was about 40 minutes later. It hit the back of the train as people got on.
The co-ordinated attacks were the deadliest in Moscow since February 2004.
Russian media reports are linking them to the death earlier this month of a rebel leader from Ingushetia - Alexander Tikhomirov, also known as Said Buryatskiy - who was blamed for an attack on a train from Moscow to St Petersburg last year that killed 26 people.
The newspaper Kommersant quoted security sources as saying they believed Tikhomirov had recruited 30 potential suicide attackers, and that two of them might have avenged his death.
 

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Suicide Bombs Strike Southern Russia



Filed at 8:07 a.m. ET

MAKHACHKALA, Russia (AP) -- Two suicide bombers -- including one impersonating a police officer -- killed 12 people Wednesday in southern Russia. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said the blasts may have been organized by the same militants who attacked the Moscow subway.

The powerful former president had previously vowed to ''drag out of the sewer'' the terrorists behind the attacks in Moscow, which killed 39 people and injured scores of commuters during Monday's rush hour.

Wednesday's blasts struck in the province of Dagestan. Bombings and other attacks occur almost daily in Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia, provinces in Russia's North Caucasus region where government forces are struggling against a separatist Islamist insurgency.

''I don't rule out that this is one and the same gang,'' Putin said at a televised Cabinet meeting.

President Dmitry Medvedev said later the attacks were ''links of the same chain.''

The Moscow subway bombings were the first suicide attacks in the Russian capital in six years and shocked a country that had grown accustomed to having such violence confined to its restive southern corner. Those attacks followed a warning from an Islamic militant leader that the militants would bring their struggle to the heart of Russia.

On Wednesday, a suicide bomber in a car detonated explosives when police tried to stop the car in the town of Kizlyar near Dagestan's border with Chechnya, Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev said.

''Traffic police followed the car and almost caught up -- at that time the blast hit,'' Nurgaliyev said.

As investigators and residents gathered around the scene of the blast, a second bomber wearing a police uniform approached and set off explosives, killing the town's police chief among others, Nurgaliyev said.

Nine police were among the dead from both blasts, and at least 23 other people were injured, authorities said. A school and police station nearby were also damaged.

Grainy cell phone video footage posted on the life.ru news portal showed the moment of the second blast, with officials wandering past a destroyed building before a loud c lap rings out and smoke rises in the distance. Television pictures later showed a few gutted cars, damaged buildings and a roughly 2-meter (six-foot) deep crater in the road.

Police and security services are a frequent target because they represent the Kremlin -- the militants' ideological enemy -- but also because of their heavy-handed tactics. Police have been accused of involvement in many killings, kidnappings and beatings in the North Caucasus, further alienating residents.

A report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies said 916 people died in the North Caucasus in 2009 in violence related to the clashes, up from 586 in 2008. Another monitoring group, the Caucasian Knot, reported the region suffered 172 terrorist attacks last year, killing 280 people in Chechnya, 319 in Ingushetia and 263 in Dagestan.

In January in Makhachkala, Dagestan's capital, a suicide bomber blew up an explosives-packed car at a police station, killing six officers. In August, 24 died and more than 200 were injured when a man crashed a bomb-laden van into the police station in Nazran, Ingushetia.

The bloodshed has continued despite Kremlin efforts to stem it. Medvedev, who claims the militants have spread through the North Caucasus ''like a cancerous tumor,'' this year appointed a deputy prime minister to oversee the troubled region and address the root causes of terrorism, including dire poverty and corruption.

Rebels from the North Caucasus were accused of masterminding the Moscow attack, but no claims of responsibility have been made. Speculation has been rife that the attacks were retaliation for the recent police killings of high-profile militants in the North Caucasus.

Monday's subway bombings, carried out by two women, were the first terrorist attacks in Moscow since 2004.

The first blast struck the Lubyanka station in central Moscow, beneath the headquarters of the Federal Security Service or FSB, the KGB's main successor agency. The FSB is a symbol of power under Putin, a former KGB officer who headed the agency before his election as president in 2000.

About 45 minutes later, a second blast hit the Park Kultury station on the same subway line, which is near the renowned Gorky Park. In both cases, the bombs were detonated as the trains pulled into the stations and the doors were opening.

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ajtr

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The hypocrisy of USA is that it sermonizes others on terrorism but when USA itself is attacked by terrorists it does war on terror.


The Moscow Bombings

Russians, and all of the world, were reminded again of the cruelty and senselessness of terrorism on Monday morning after two rush-hour bombings on the Moscow subway killed 39 people and injured more than 70 others. We share the horror and remember our own anguish. Nearly 10 years after the 9/11 attacks, the memory of innocent lives taken in the midst of a morning’s routine moments has not faded. No one has claimed responsibility. But two female suicide bombers are believed to have set off the explosions in two subway stations, including Lubyanka near the Russian security service headquarters. The brazenness raised fears that, after six years of relative calm, the country may be facing a renewed campaign of attacks by extremists from the Caucasus.

Russia’s leaders have an obligation to protect their people. And President Obama was right to offer American assistance as Russian authorities work to track down the organizers behind these cowardly acts. We are concerned, however, that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will use Monday’s horror as another excuse to further consolidate his authoritarian control of the country.

After extremists from Chechnya executed a series of bloody attacks in 2004, then-President Putin pushed through “reforms” supposedly intended to improve Russians’ security. Their effect was to hand the Kremlin, Mr. Putin and the state security services, from which he came, far too much power to silence a free press and undercut nearly all political challengers.

Relying overwhelmingly on brute force and repression, Mr. Putin staked his reputation on ending the conflict in Chechnya. And he persuaded Russians, who have little access to independent reporting, that he had broken the back of the resistance. What he failed to tell them was that the violence in Chechnya ignited again last year and has spread to neighboring republics.

If Russia is to have any hope of defeating extremism, Mr. Putin is going to have to focus less on promoting his own power and more on the root causes of the conflicts in the Caucasus. He can start by heeding his protégé, Dmitri Medvedev, the current president who has urged that the Kremlin address the underlying inequities that feed militancy, including poverty, joblessness and official corruption. Brute force alone will not work this time either.
 

ajtr

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Putin orders Moscow bombers "scraped from sewers"

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Prime Minister Vladimir Putin Tuesday said the culprits behind twin suicide bombings that killed 39 people in Moscow's metro must be scraped "from the bottom of the sewers" and exposed.
The tough talk came a day after the deadliest attack on the Russian capital in six years fueled fears of a broader offensive by rebels based in the North Caucasus and underscored the Kremlin's failure to keep militants in check.
Putin told a meeting on transport security that surveillance cameras could not prevent terrorist attacks but might help police identify their organizers.
"In this case, we know they're lying low, but it's a matter of honor for law enforcement bodies to scrape them from the bottom of the sewers and into the daylight," he said.
The colorful language fit Putin's tough image.
In 1999, as he led Moscow into a war against Chechen separatists that sealed his rise to power, he vowed to pursue terrorists everywhere and "rub them out in the outhouse."
Moscow observed a day of mourning Tuesday for the victims of the blasts, which authorities said were set off by female suicide bombers linked to the North Caucasus -- a string of heavily Muslim provinces that includes Chechnya.
Flags flew at half-mast and somber Muscovites -- some sobbing, some crossing themselves -- laid flowers and lit candles at the stations hit by Monday's rush-hour blasts.
Grieving relatives identified victims at central Moscow's Morgue Number Two.
Eyes brimming with tears, an elderly man said his son usually drove to work but had his license confiscated recently.
"So he went by metro and he died," said the man, who identified himself as Vladimir Petrovich, giving his patronymic but not his last name.
PRICKLY PROBLEM
In less earthy terms than Putin, who steered him into the presidency in 2008 and is seen as the dominant partner in Russia's ruling tandem, Medvedev also vowed justice.
"We have destroyed terrorists and will destroy them," he said in televised remarks at a meeting on civil rights.
But he accentuated the hurdles the Kremlin faces in uprooting an Islamic insurgency in the North Caucasus, saying the government must tread carefully in the turbulent region and tackle the root causes.
"People want a normal human life no matter where they live -- in central Russia, the Caucasus or somewhere else," he said. "It's up to federal authorities and the authorities in the Caucasus region to create these conditions."
The war Putin launched in 1999 drove separatists from power in Chechnya, but simmering violence has escalated in the past two years in Chechnya and neighboring Dagestan and Ingushetia.
Rights groups contend that poverty, corruption and abuse of power is fuelling the insurgency.
NERVOUS MOSCOW
In recent years, attacks had been largely limited to the North Caucasus.
With police patrols increased Tuesday, commuters warily entered Moscow's metro system the morning after the blasts on packed trains at the central Lubyanka and Park Kultury stations.
"When I was riding the metro in today, somebody's electronic watch started beeping and I thought, "That's it," said Katya Vankova, a business student.
Memorials were set up at both stations. At Park Kultury, people left red carnations and tied white ribbons to a stand on the platform close to where the bomb went off.
A young woman died of her injuries Tuesday, bringing the death toll to 39, Andrei Seltsovsky, the chief of Moscow's health department, said on state-run Rossiya 24 television.
He said 71 other people were still in hospital, five of them in critical condition. Officials said the bombs that caused the carnage were packed with bolts and iron rods.
 

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