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Volgograd bus bombing kills five Volgograd bus bombing kills six
(about 2 hours later)
Russian investigators suspect that a female suicide bomber was responsible for a blast that killed at least five people on a bus in the southern city of Volgograd on Monday, the Interfax news agency has reported. A female suicide bomber attacked a bus in southern Russia on Monday, killing at least six people, authorities said, in the deadliest such blast outside the volatile North Caucasus region in nearly three years.
Citing a source in the regional investigative committee office, Interfax said identity documents were found near the site and that the bomber was believed to have been the wife of an Islamist militant. The bombing in Volgograd is likely to raise fears of further attacks by Islamist militants as Russia prepares to host the Winter Olympics in February in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, not far from the mainly Muslim North Caucasus.
The explosion – which wounded 32 people, seven of whom were in grave condition – was the deadliest such attack outside Russia's volatile North Caucasus region in nearly three years. After a series of conflicting reports about the cause, the national anti-terrorism committee said it was a bomb. The attack, which investigators blamed on a 30-year-old woman from Dagestan, the North Caucasus province at the centre of an insurgency, wounded 32 people, of whom eight were in critical condition, the federal investigative committee said.
"Today at 2.05pm, an unknown explosive device detonated on a passenger bus in the city of Volgograd, causing human casualties," the committee said. It did not assign blame and there was no immediate claim of responsibility. State television broadcast footage taken from a camera mounted on a driver's dashboard, showing an explosion ripping through the bus as it travelled along a tree-lined road, sending shards of metal and glass flying. Passengers scrambled out of doors and windows after the bus had stopped.
Insurgents who say they are fighting to create an Islamic state in Russia's mostly Muslim North Caucasus have carried out deadly bombings inside and outside the region, made up of several provinces along Russia's southern border. "There was a blast, a bang, all the glass flew out of the windows," a witness named Ivan, who had been driving behind the bus, told the state-run Rossiya-24 channel. "The cloud of smoke quickly dissipated and then I saw people start to fall out and run out to escape the bus. It was a horrible sight."
The insurgents claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing that killed 37 people at Moscow airport in January 2011, and two nearly simultaneous suicide bombings that killed 40 people on the Moscow subway in 2010. Citing a regional investigative source, the Interfax news agency said identity documents suspected to belong to the bomber were found near the site, and that she was believed to have been the wife of an Islamist militant. The investigative committee named the suspect as Naida Asiyalova, 30, of Dagestan.
Volgograd is a city of around one million people that lies 560 miles south-east of Moscow and a few hundred miles north of the North Caucasus and Black Sea resort city of Sochi, where Russia will host the 2014 Winter Olympics. "This woman got on the bus at one of the stops and the explosion occurred almost immediately afterwards. This was confirmed by the surviving passengers," said Vladimir Markin, an investigative committee spokesman.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
Volgograd, a city of around one million people, lies 560 miles south-east of Moscow and a few hundred miles north of the North Caucasus and Sochi, at the western end of the Caucasus range.
Vladimir Putin has staked his reputation on the Games and ordered authorities to boost security in the North Caucasus, where the Islamist insurgency is rooted in two post-Soviet wars pitting Chechen separatists against the Kremlin.Vladimir Putin has staked his reputation on the Games and ordered authorities to boost security in the North Caucasus, where the Islamist insurgency is rooted in two post-Soviet wars pitting Chechen separatists against the Kremlin.
Insurgents who say they are fighting to create an Islamic state have claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing that killed 37 people at a Moscow airport in 2011 and twin suicide bombings that killed 40 people on the Moscow subway in 2010.
The latter attack was carried out female suicide bombers, dubbed "black widows" in Russia because often their male relatives have been killed by security forces.
In 2002, Chechen women wearing black chadors and suicide belts took part in a three-day Moscow theatre hostage siege in which around 130 people were killed.
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