Suicide bomber kills at least 16 at Russian train station
Reuters - 1 hr ago
By Sergei Karpov
VOLGOGRAD, Russia (Reuters) - A suicide bomber set off a blast in the
entrance hall of a Russian train station on Sunday, investigators
said, killing at least 16 people in the second deadly attack within
three days as the country prepares to host the Winter Olympics.
Authorities said the attacker detonated a shrapnel-filled bomb in
front of a metal detector just inside the main entrance of the station
in Volgograd, a busy hub north of the violence-plagued North Caucasus
region on Russia's southern fringe.
Islamist militants in the North Caucasus have carried out a long
string of attacks since President Vladimir Putin came to power in
2000. They now confront him with his biggest security challenge,
threatening to disrupt the Olympics that start in the Black Sea resort
of Sochi in 40 days.
Footage shown on TV captured the moment of the blast, as a massive
orange fireball filled the hall of the stately, colonnaded station and
clouds of grey smoke poured out of shattered windows.
The station - a Stalinesque architectural monument with a clocktower
and spire topped by a Soviet-style star - was busier than usual, with
people travelling home for the New Year, one of the main holidays in
Russia.
"People were lying on the ground, screaming and calling for help," a
witness, Alexander Koblyakov, told Rossiya-24 TV. "I helped carry out
a police officer whose head and face were covered in blood. He
couldn't speak."
The city once bore the name Stalingrad in honor of Soviet dictator
Josef Stalin, a figure held in opprobrium by many in the North
Caucasus.
In the 1940s, Stalin ordered the deportation of tens of thousands of
people from the region, including Chechens, to Central Asia on
suspicion of harboring sympathies for Nazi Germany. Many thousands
died in exile and transport.
The federal Investigative Committee and other officials initially said
a female suicide bomber had blown herself up after a police officer
started to approach her near the metal detector because she looked
suspicious.
A Russian website with ties to security agencies, Life News, posted a
picture of what it said was the suspect's head.
It said authorities had identified her as a resident of Dagestan, the
province adjacent to Chechnya and now the center of a long-running
Islamist insurgency, and the widow of two militants who were both
killed by Russian security forces.
Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin later said a man
could have set off the blast, Russian news agencies reported.
Interfax cited law enforcement sources as saying authorities believed
the attacker was a man who brought a bomb into the station with a
rucksack. Some bombs carried by female suicide bombers have been set
off remotely by male accomplices.
So-called 'black widows', seeking to avenge fallen husbands, were
involved in a deadly Moscow theatre siege in 2002 and have been behind
several bombings including twin suicide attacks that killed 40 on the
Moscow subway in 2010.
"We can expect more such attacks," said Alexei Filatov, deputy head of
the veterans' association of the elite Alfa anti-terrorism unit.
"The threat is greatest now because it is when terrorists can make the
biggest impression," he told Reuters. "The security measures were
beefed up long ago around Sochi, so terrorists will strike instead in
these nearby cities like Volgograd."
The insurgency is rooted in two post-Soviet separatist wars in
Chechnya, the second of which was launched by Putin as Prime Minister
and succeeded in driving separatists from power.
Markin said 16 people were killed in the attack, including two who
died in hospital. A regional government official also put the toll at
16 and said that did not include the attacker.
TIGHTER SECURITY
Putin ordered law enforcement agencies to take all necessary
precautions to ensure security, his spokesman said. Police said
security would be tightened at stations and airports, with more
officers on duty and stricter passenger checks.
The attack, just over two months after a female suicide bomber killed
six people on a bus in the same city, raised questions about the
effectiveness of security measures which the Kremlin routinely orders
increased after bombings.
It could add to concerns about the government's ability to safeguard
the Sochi Olympics, which open on February 7. Putin has staked much of
his prestige on staging safe and successful Games, a chance to show
how far Russia has come since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
Volgograd, which as Stalingrad was scene of a decisive World War Two
battle - much of the fighting centered on the railway station - is a
city of around 1 million and a transport hub in southern Russia, about
430 miles northeast of Sochi.
Putin visited in February to mark the 70th anniversary of the battle,
which has made the city a symbol of strength in the face of adversity.
It lies north of the North Caucasus, a string of mostly Muslim
provinces that includes Chechnya and is beset by near-daily violence
linked to the insurgency. Militants claim the area as a separate
Islamic "emirate".
CAR BOMB
Insurgent leader Doku Umarov, a Chechen warlord, urged militants in a
video posted online in July to use "maximum force" to prevent Putin
staging the Olympics. On Friday, a car bomb killed three people in
Pyatigorsk, close to the North Caucasus and 270 km (170 miles) east of
Sochi.
Volgograd is one of the venues for the 2018 soccer World Cup, another
high-profile sports event Putin has helped Russia win the right to
stage, and which will bring thousands of foreign fans to cities around
Russia.
Sunday's attack was the deadliest to strike Russia's heartland since
January 2011, when a male suicide bomber from the North Caucasus
killed 37 people in the arrivals hall of a busy Moscow airport.
Thirty-seven people were hospitalized, including 15 in grave
condition, Health Ministry spokesman Oleg Salagai said.
The committee said the toll could have been much higher if the
attacker had made it into the station waiting hall.
But Filatov said that the widespread practice of placing metal
detectors at the entrance of airports and stations risked causing more
casualties: "We are creating this danger ourselves by allowing a place
for a crowd to gather."
The Investigative Committee said the bomb detonated with a force
equivalent to at least 10 kg (22 lb) of TNT.
(Reporting by Alissa de Carbonnel and Steve Gutterman; Editing by Mark
Trevelyan)
388 comments

I am no happy, someone is given to the Russians de seam they had give
to many people in the world, especially to South America y en Germans.
It has nothing to do with religions, it is the same cooking soup God
is sending to them, it is time they fell what I felt when I as just a
child y they came to my country and kill 16 family members children
and a pregnant woman. I never had forgotten that terrible crime, in
innocent people, farmers that is raising food for the rest of their
town. One of them latter on was hidden in my home bath room, he scared
me a great deal I was only 10 years old. The army also killed one of
them, I was taking to the army station t identify its dead body that
Russian criminal. Even I was a child, did not feel sorry, but scared,
only remembered he was told y looks yellow y part oriental Mongolian,
I did not know that time Geography, but now I know, he was part of
both sides, Russia/Mongolian.
Lili Rolda, 1 min ago

I cannot but wonder why these garbage bag people and their
unfathomable religion think that killing strangers will make others
want to back them. They live in the middle ages and don't try to come
into the 21st century.
Great Daze, 1 hr ago

Ban Burkhas / bee keeper suits worldwide. If their women are now
suicide bombing, they need to be searched vigorously. And ban those
dastardly symbols of domination and subjugation.
kaosillator, 3 hrs ago

This area is just North of the area the older brother of the two
Boston Bombers grew up in. He visited the area in 2012. He was the one
who made the bombs and the Russian's warned us about yet we did
nothing. Good thing the NSA has our phone records though....
Tater Tot, 4 hrs ago

Men supposedly get virgins. What do women suicide bombers get? If they
only realized that the only thing they are getting is death.
NeilB, 5 hrs ago
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