Chechnya Terrorists Attack Russia
On the morning of March 29, 2010 two related suicide bombings in Russia killed as many as 38 citizens and injured up to 60 others as they were on their way to work in the early morning rush hour attack. Two female suicide bombers blew themselves up on Moscow’s subway system as it was jam-packed with rush-hour passengers.
The first attack on one of the world’s busiest metro systems occurred just before 8:00 a.m. (4:00 GMT) at the Lubyanka station under the headquarters of the Federal Security Services (FSB), the KGB’s main successor agency, as people hurried to work. That blast took the lives of 24 people. The second, which happened some 40 minutes later at the nearby Park Kultury station, killed another 12. One more person is reported as having died in the bombings. The total number of injured in both blasts is over 70. The bombings were the first major terrorist attacks in the Russian capital for six years. he head of the Federal Security Services (FSB), Alexander Bortnikov, said terrorists from Russia’s North Caucasus may have been involved in the attacks. He added that in both cases the bombs were packed with metal nuts and bolts to increase the destructive nature of the blast.
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. 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.
The last major terrorist incident to hit Moscow occurred in the autumn of 2004, when ten people were killed in a suicide bombing outside a metro station. The explosion was part of a series of terrorist attacks that also saw 90 people die in two plane bombings and the deaths of over 300 people, many of them children, when Chechen terrorists seized a school in the North Ossetian town of Beslan. A bomb in the Moscow metro in February 2004 also killed 40 people. Outside of the volatile North Caucasus, these were the last major terrorist attacks in Russia until last November, when a bomb derailed a Moscow-St. Petersburg express train, killing 27 people.
Who Carried Out The Terrorist Attacks In Russia
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. 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,”.
“Caucasus Emirate” a group led by Chechen militant Doku Umarov has repeatedly warned in recent months it was planning to strike the capital in Russia. Umarov has relied on al-Qaida’s financial support and has several al-Qaida emissaries in his entourage, said Alexander Ignatenko, the head of the independent Moscow-based Institute for Religion and Politics, who has closely followed the Islamic insurgency in the Caucasus. “Al-Qaida has established a presence in the North Caucasus, like they did in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia and Europe,” Ignatenko told The Associated Press. The militants’ links with al-Qaida also are recognized by other experts on terrorism.
The bombers may have been so-called Black Widows, Chechen women who have lost family members to the Russian military. There were reports that the suspected bomber in the Park Kultury attack was aged between 18 and 20, her face sufficiently unmarked as to be recognizable. The other woman’s facial features were also said to be visible. Both women had black hair and wore black clothes.
Russian police have killed several Islamic militant leaders in the North Caucasus recently, including one last week in the Kabardino-Balkariya region, which raised fears of retaliatory strikes and escalating bloodshed by the militants. Militants in the Caucasus have declared the creation of an Islamic state as their top goal. Radical Islamic sects have spread throughout the Caucasus region and parts of Russia as well, with religious schools set up. In Chechnya, Kremlin-backed strongman Ramzan Kadyrov has conducted a campaign to impose Islamic values in an effort to blunt the appeal of hard-line Islamic separatists.
Contributors to three Web sites affiliated with al-Qaida wrote comments in praise of Monday’s attacks. One site opened a special page to “receive congratulations” for the Chechen rebels who “started the dark tunnel attacks in the apostate countries,” and all wished for God to accept the two women as martyrs. “Don’t forget Russia’s crimes of genocide in the Caucasus and Chechnya,” said one writer. “The battle has been shifted to the heart of Moscow,” another wrote.
In February, Doku Umarov, the leader of a Chechen separatist group, said in an interview on a rebel-affiliated website that “the zone of military operations will be extended to the territory of Russia”. Umarov, who claimed responsibility for the bombing of a passenger train travelling between Moscow and St Petersburg in November, warned that “the war is coming to their cities”. Russian forces fought two wars with Chechen separatists, and last year declared that the conflict was over.However, the violence has spread from Chechnya to the neighbouring regions of Dagestan and Ingushetia.
