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MOSCOW, Aug 8 (AFP) - Muscovites were gripped by shock and anxiety Tuesday as terrorism returned to the Russian capital when a powerful blast rocked through a city center underpass, killing at least seven people.
"We are in shock. It must be an act of vengeance by the Chechens," trembled Lyudmilla Malygina, a salesgirl who was tending her stall in the underground passage in Pushkin Square when the explosion struck. "I am afraid to take the Metro. The police don't have the time to check everything and there could be explosives," said Yekaterina Domenichinova, her eyes staring blankly. "All this is taking place in broad daylight and right in the center of the capital. Anyone could have been there," said student Yelena, in a terrorized voice. Among the crowd massed outside the scene of the blast, anxious people phoned to get news of their family and friends. A woman wandered around desperately searching for her sister who worked in the underpass. "It's a miracle I stayed alive. All their promises of security mean nothing," said Tatiana Mikhailova, an actress and theatre director. "There is no doubt that the Chechens are behind this terrorist act. It's stupid knowing the psychology of these people to intervene in their republic. So many people have died because that began again," she protested. A blast in the center of Moscow on August 31st last year marked the first in a series of terrorist acts that killed 293 people in Russia.
Chechnya's separatist president Aslan Maskhadov denied any rebel involvement in the Pushkin Square blast. "As long as peace is not concluded in Chechnya, terrorist acts will continue," Mikhailova said. "The Russian actions in Chechnya are provoking the Chechens to retaliate. They are responding to the violence of the Russian soldiers in Chechnya, to the death of Chechen civilians," explained businessman Alexander Pravkov. "We have to put an end to this war," he added firmly. This attitude marked a sharp contrast from last autumn, when the Russian population massively backed the Russian crackdown in the rebel republic. Hatred of the people from the Caucasus gripped pensioner Leonid Nitko. "I don't know who is behind this explosion but we have to get rid of all the Caucausians in Moscow, the Azerbaijanis, and the Chechens who bring us bad luck," he spluttered. Members of the ultra-nationalist party of Vladimir Zhirinovsky staged an anti-Chechen protest two hours after the blast. "A good Chechen is a dead Chechen," one of their posters proclaimed. Islamist Chechens ambush Meanwhile, ITAR-TASS, citing military sources, reports two Russian soldiers were killed Tuesday and several others injured in an ambush staged by Islamists in Chechnya.
The Chechen Islamist website, however, claimed that the Islamists had carried out two successful attacks in the capital Grozny leaving at least 10 Russian soldiers dead. They struck in the western Chechen village of Samashki, which fell under Russian control in the early days of the army's 10-month-old campaign to rein in the breakaway Islamic republic. Separately, an undisclosed number of Russian soldiers were wounded when their armored car hit a remote-controlled mine near the war-ravaged capital Grozny, the office of the Kremlin's spokesperson on the conflict, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, said. The two sides frequently exaggerate their opponent's losses in battle. Russia's AVN military news agency further reported that a federal serviceman died while rescuing two Russian television journalists poisoned by gas fumes while filming an oil well in Grozny. In another development 751 people are still held as hostages in Russia's volatile North Caucasus region, ITAR-TASS quoted criminal investigators as saying on Tuesday. Some 1,743 people have been taken hostage in the Northern Caucasus since 1992, Mikhail Vanechkin, head of the Russia's organized crime department, told the agency. "Of those, 992 people have been freed, leaving 751 in captivity", Vanechkin said, adding that 55 people were kidnapped in the North Caucasus since January 2000. Including 23 servicemen, 25 civilians, six law-enforcement officers and one unidentified foreigner. Since the start of the year, 151 hostages were released from Chechen captivity, Vanechkin claimed. Two International Red Cross workers, a Frenchwoman and an Italian, disappeared Friday with their driver in the Georgian mountains. Georgian authorities fear that they also were kidnapped and are now held as hostages. |
These bombings, blamed on Chechen rebels, prompted Russia to launch a massive "anti-terrorist" operation in the rebellious republic, in the second war in the region since the disastrous 1994-1996 conflict.
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