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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Bomb explodes in Moscow Domodedovo airport (DME), double digit fatalities |
| 2011-01-24 |
| Mod note: There were entries for this story, so I chose the one posted the earliest NYT account via Tipper at 1005 CT. AoS. An explosion ripped through the arrival hall of Moscow's Domodedovo Airport. At least 2 have been killed, Russian news agencies say, although the BBC says that ten people have been killed in the blast. An airport employee confirmed the explosion. The explosion took place in the international terminal of the airport, in the baggage claim area, at 16:40 Moscow time. At least 20 have been injured. The arrival terminal has been closed, RIA Novosti reports. Huh. So the luggage arrived from abroad? Or it was intended to go somewhere else but exploded early? Eyewitnesses said that rescuers began to evacuate people from the area of the explosion. "One of them was all covered with blood and had his leg bandaged. Another one had blood stains on his shirt," an unidentified eyewitness said. Domodedovo is the largest airport in Russia in terms of passenger and cargo traffic (22.25 million passengers used the airport in 2010, which is a 19.2% increase over 2009), and is one of the three major Moscow airports along with Sheremetyevo and Vnukovo. From Xinhua, which has a bit more detail than Itar/Tass version at the moment: (Xinhua) -- At least 31 people were killed and over 130 were injured in an explosion at Moscow's Domodedovo airport on Monday, the Russian Health Ministry said. |
| Posted by:gromky |
| #26 Skidmark, I'm glad you're on our side. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2011-01-24 23:50 |
| #25 Perhaps you mean Webster Tarpley? |
| Posted by: Pappy 2011-01-24 23:28 |
| #24 I just did a Google search. Nothing of note turned up. They may just slap a fresh alias on someone to create a new expert they don't want associated with past shit. |
| Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2011-01-24 23:25 |
| #23 Who the fuck is Wilson Tarpley that Russia's RT television has explaining to the world why the US is behind this horrible bombing? What is Vlad's sick game here? |
| Posted by: Water Modem 2011-01-24 23:20 |
| #22 A quiet moment for the innocent victims and their families... Now who has access to the passenger manifests for these flights? Why THIS TIME? Who was picking up their bags? A pretty tight window by US standards. Which flights were on the ground 20-45 minutes before the blast? Who has been thru there? Do they 'meet&greet' at the bag stations? Do they have 'no curb parking' rules for baggage? Did someone just walk in with the bomb bag? Is there street/door video collecting traffic patterns and license plates? 5-10kg of material? So they have a blast radius? That's easily a vest. Why the focus on bags in the news? Misdirection? Any analysts? Who has other channels? |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2011-01-24 23:01 |
| #21 Gorb. I know they got the tactical leader and whatever he suffered wasn't enough. I'm talking about the REMFs who sent him, financed him, recruited for him. IOW, getting the tactical leader of a suicide squad lacks a certain satisfaction. |
| Posted by: Richard Aubrey 2011-01-24 22:52 |
| #20 Seems to me they got the leader of the movement that was responsible. Killed him dead. I remember a picture of his bloated face. It was not a quick, clean death. Do I remember right? And if they got him, they surely had to have pulled a whole string of folks between Beslan and him. |
| Posted by: gorb 2011-01-24 21:40 |
| #19 anonymoose. I can see that. Problem is, he didn't do anything to the bad guys, the potential bad guys, the possible bad guys, or some random guys just in case. His black ops folks are supposed to be pretty good. Was there ever an unexplained death or deaths among a bunch of well-connected Wahhabis? Not sure we'd know, but the info might be out there. Now, you can bust Chechens when it's them and some SA-funded wackjobs from Yemen And you can bust some folks in, say, Syria or Jordan when it's really some clowns from, say, Hamburg. And you can bust an ISI office in Pakistan when it's really some bozos from Uighuristan or whatever they have there. Because if the guys you bust didn't really do it, they didn't really do it this time but they're planning a next time. You know that. We can't do it. See Wretchard on South Korea and Malaysian secret weapons in the piracy struggle. |
| Posted by: Richard Aubrey 2011-01-24 16:45 |
| #18 Buried for many years by the American Party Media is this. The Russians while profiting from the process none the less are the back up line to the Pakistan logistics into Central Asia. They have as much interest in destroying the opium fields as we have in destroying the base of operations for the terrorists. So, begrudgingly we're once again allied to end another ugly problem in the world. Someone is sending a message. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2011-01-24 16:03 |
| #17 Richard Aubrey: Putin used it as an excuse to consolidate power. However, the bottom line was an odd one. As with 9-11, the impulse for the attack, and many of the attackers, were Wahhabis, of unspecified foreign origin, Arabian region, much like the Saudi Wahhabis that attacked the US. They had picked up other radicals en route, the largest group of which were from Ingushetia. While they initially celebrated, because the assumption was that it was the Chechens that were responsible, this backfired terribly on the Chechens, as they were the ones labeled child killers, and sympathy for them dried up around the world. Because of this, the Chechens discontinued terrorist attacks against the Russians for the better part of two years. But who would the Russians attack? Saudi Arabia? Yemen? They had already flattened a goodly portion of Chechnya. So Putin fell back to just strengthening his own power. But this time, this is an attack on Moscow, something that the Russians tend to get weird about. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2011-01-24 15:43 |
| #16 found a head of "Arab appearance" He's not going to much enjoy Paradise, wandering headless as he will be... or will he be sitting still, with nothing below the neck? |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2011-01-24 15:26 |
| #15 Sydney Morning Herald Russian investigators on Monday found a head of "Arab appearance" that is presumed to have belonged to the suicide bomber responsible for setting off the blast, Interfax said. According to preliminary information, the bomber was a resident of the overwhelmingly Muslim Northern Caucasus region, Interfax said. |
| Posted by: Beavis 2011-01-24 14:35 |
| #14 After Beslan, Putin did nothing. Perhaps there was nothing left to do to Chechnya. Not even a cruise missile to some camp in the desert someplace, just on general principles. |
| Posted by: Richard Aubrey 2011-01-24 14:19 |
| #13 RIP to the victims. I haven't heard any US leftists try to tie this to Sarah Palin but I presume it is coming. Other leftists will find a way to blame Israel or the US. |
| Posted by: Lord Garth 2011-01-24 14:16 |
| #12 The BBC updates to 35 dead as of 12:35 ET. The Wall Street Journal appears to have the same sources as European Conservative: Officials at Domodedovo, south of the capital, said the airport was still functioning. Some international flights were diverted to other Moscow airports, where security was also tightened. The blast took place outside a security zone near the baggage claim area, near the Asia Kafe, where people await arriving passengers, Interfax news agency said, quoting the Federal Customs Service. Russian news agencies quoted security officials as saying the bomb, laced with metal pieces to increase its power to kill, was detonated in the crowd of people meeting arriving passengers. The blast was equal to seven kilograms (15 pounds) of TNT, the reports said. Interfax quoted law enforcement sources as saying the bomber was probably from southern Russia's restive North Caucasus region. The report said police were looking for three suspects thought to be linked to the attack. No person or group claimed responsibility for the blast. A law enforcement official told Interfax that cell-phone jamming devices had been switched on following Monday's attack to prevent the bomber's accomplices from setting off another explosion. The report said three men living in the Moscow area were suspected of having organized the attack. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2011-01-24 14:00 |
| #11 I strongly suspect that Putin and Medvedev are going to go on a seriously bloody revenge over this. A LOT of Muslims are going to die, and in pretty awful ways. In some ways this was worse than Beslan. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2011-01-24 13:02 |
| #10 It's grainy and shaky But I counted 8 down, and saw one man pick two bags off the floor and leave? A thief ? |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2011-01-24 12:17 |
| #9 Russian TV speaks of an attack with maybe two bombs filled with metal pieces. Explosion force with a minimum of 7 kg TNT |
| Posted by: European Conservative 2011-01-24 11:43 |
| #8 Hot Air has Russian video of incident |
| Posted by: Frozen Al 2011-01-24 11:38 |
| #7 Fox News at this moment (1020 CT) does not reference any specific size of explosive. Their report and that of the NYT and Pravda (linked above) all read about the same. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2011-01-24 11:30 |
| #6 Maybe it was a bomb in some luggage that was supposed to go off when the plane was in flight? |
| Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2011-01-24 11:13 |
| #5 Correction: The suicide attack did not happen in the baggage claim area but in the public arrival hall |
| Posted by: European Conservative 2011-01-24 11:10 |
| #4 10,000 pounds of TNT? Russian sources speak of 7kg |
| Posted by: European Conservative 2011-01-24 11:00 |
| #3 A baggage claim area for an arriving US Flight would be a perfect place to carry out a suicide bomber assassination. |
| Posted by: Penguin 2011-01-24 10:33 |
| #2 Excuse the typos. Its early. The flight from Houston was on Singapore airlines. |
| Posted by: Gerthudion Unump7993 2011-01-24 10:23 |
| #1 Fox is reporting 31 dead and 130 injured now. They believe 10,000 pounds of TNT or equiv used in baggage area that received international flights from Dulles (United)and Houston plus served by Air France and British airwaysn(Singapore). I also saw the headline below 'Russia to train Afghan police'. Probably not a suicide bomber with this masdsive blast. |
| Posted by: Gerthudion Unump7993 2011-01-24 10:20 |