New details emerged about a terrorist attack on a Moscow metro train last Friday. The Federal Security Service has established that the explosive device that detonated in the Moscow metro was very similar to explosives used to blow up two electric trains in the Stavropol region last year. Responsibility for the Stavropol train bombings was claimed by the notorious Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev. Investigators of the Moscow metro bombing assume that Basayev was also behind the latest attack.
| Sounds like a reasonable conclusion to me. Abu Walid pays, Shamil rounds up the boomers, and the Mysterious Veiled Lady™ dumps them at the site. |
On Monday, they finally concluded that the blast had been carried out by a suicide bomber, the Kommersant newspaper reported. According to Moscow Prosecutor Anatoly Zuyev, this conclusion is based on the preliminary results of a technical examination. The second and the third carriages of the ill-fated train, which were most affected by the powerful blast, were towed to an area where they could be examined in detail. Bomb experts examined the carriages carefully trying to collect as much information as possible about the type and size of the explosive device and how it could be transported. According to experts, this is the only real way to find the perpetrators of the bombing.
| That, and reconstructing as much of their carcasses as can be found... |
Investigators have already made some achievements. Firstly, they have established that an explosive device had been detonated. A battery and a switch with a small piece of electric wire were found on one of the bodies. Federation Security Service officers are convinced that this is part of the explosive device, and it shows that a suicide bomber was involved in the attack. âBut it will take no less than a month to establish the gender of the suicide bomber, and a number of complex forensic and medical examinations will have to be conducted,â sources in the Federal Security Service told the newspaper. Secondly, the power of the home-made bomb was established. The bomb experts of the Federal Security Service believe that the explosion was the equivalent of 2.5kg of TNT. The bomb was made of a mixture of ammonium nitrate, TNT and RDX. Such mixtures were used by terrorists in the past, including in the Stavropol train bombings last year.
The death toll in the Moscow metro explosion rose to 40 after an unidentified man injured in the blast died in Moscowâs Hospital 53. However, the Moscow Healthcare Department denied that the man had died in the hospital. It is rumored in Moscow that there are other victim lists, much longer than the official lists. Allegedly, the Federation Security Service does not allow them to be published. The Nezavisimaya Gazeta is trying to clear the situation. According to the newspaper, officials in the Moscow administration and the Federal Security Service denied such reports. âWe do not hide anything,â they said. However, sources in the Federation Security Service told the Nezavisimaya Gazeta that the real death toll was about sixty people. âThe exact number of those killed in the attack is unlikely to be established. Many passengers in the second carriage were blown into pieces, and it is impossible to identify them,â the source said. Investigators noticed that all large recent terrorist attacks in Moscow, including the theater siege in October 2003, have happened not far from each other, the newspaper reports. âThis area in Moscow attracts terrorists like a magnet. It is not ruled out that they have a hideout somewhere in this area, for example in a rented apartment.â |