Bombs kill 12 as Moscow on alert for Black Widow squad
Sydney Morning Herald
Thursday April 1, 2010
MOSCOW: Twelve people have been killed in twin blasts in Russia's volatile North Caucasus region of Dagestan, one of which was caused by a suicide bomber, investigators said. Another 23 people were wounded.The first blast was set off as a police car drove out of the interior ministry building in the Dagestani town of Kizlyar, authorities said.Twenty minutes later, a suicide bomber in police uniform blew himself up as investigators and police were probing the scene of the first attack.The blasts came two days after female suicide bombers killed 39 in attacks on the Moscow metro which the authorities have linked to militants from the Caucasus.Investigators have warned that 21 Black Widow suicide bombers trained by an Islamist terrorist known as "the Russian bin Laden" remain at large and may launch fresh attacks on Moscow.Investigators said they were trying to confirm whether the two women were part of what was originally a 30-strong female "martyrs' brigade".The terrorist who trained the brigade, an Islamist convert calling himself Said Buryatsky, was killed in a special forces operation this month in Ingushetia, a strife-torn region bordering Chechnya.He was known as the Islamist rebel movement's ideologue-in-chief in southern Russia. Investigators said Mr Buryatsky, whose real name was Alexander Tikhomirov, had recruited 30 female suicide bombers in Chechnya and Ingushetia and dispatched them to Turkey to be taught the precepts of radical Islam.The women are known as Black Widows because they have usually lost husbands or close relatives in clashes with Russian forces and are motivated by revenge.Nine of the original 30 brigade members are known to have already blown themselves up in the lawless North Caucasus region along Russia's southern flank where suicide attacks started again last year after a long pause.The Moscow metro attack may have been vengeance for Mr Buryatsky's death, officers said.A source from Russia's FSB service said: "If people trained by Buryatsky himself were involved in these attacks then the explosions are only the beginning. Especially since Doku Umarov, the leader of the militants, gave Buryatsky his orders and has long promised to spread war across Russia."No group has yet claimed responsibility for the metro bombing. Unconfirmed reports claimed the security services may have had advance warning of the bombing. There was strong criticism of Vladimir Putin, the Prime Minister, as well as President Dmitry Medvedev, for not doing more to prevent the atrocity.Questions were also being asked of the country's state-controlled television stations, which were slow to interrupt normal programming and report news of the bombings.Mr Putin responded in typically tough fashion. Speaking on state television, he said he was confident the perpetrators would be "scraped from the bottom of the sewers" where they were hiding.But The New York Times reported that Mr Medvedev made a point of publicly discussing poverty and unemployment in the North Caucasus, which he has said were the root causes of violence there.Monday's bombings came at an uncertain moment for Russia's Caucasus policy, which had been wavering between the muscular clampdown championed by Mr Putin as president and the cautious liberalisation introduced after Mr Medvedev took office.
© 2010 Sydney Morning Herald