August 31, 2004
By Oliver Bullough
Yahoo News
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Eight people were killed and 34 injured by a female suicide bomber in a crowded part of central Moscow Tuesday evening, Moscow's mayor said.
The blast follows a series of suicide attacks in Russia over the past year, including near simultaneous plane crashes exactly a week ago, all of them linked by officials to Chechen rebels seeking independence from Moscow.
Mayor Yuri Luzhkov said the woman had tried to enter a metro station, Riga Station, that would have been crowded toward the end of the evening rush hour.
"She ... was at the door when she saw two policeman. She was scared and turned and decided to destroy herself," Luzhkov said.
"Up to 1 kg (2.2 pounds) of explosive was used," Luzhkov told reporters at the scene. "This is an unusual amount of explosive for a woman suicide bomber. There was a desire to cause maximum damage."
He said four children and 11 women were among the injured. Seven people died immediately in the blast, including the bomber. Another person died later in hospital.
Police earlier said the bomb had been packed with metal bolts.
Local television channels broke into their evening programs to show footage of a blazing car parked between a large shopping center and the entrance to the metro station, with several bodies lying on the pavement.
The explosion came on the last day of the summer school holidays when parents and their children were certain to be doing last-minute pre-school shopping.
"It was like a big thunder clap. I was just coming out of the shop. There was one explosion, then another small one, probably from gas," Alexei Borodin, 29, told Reuters.
"I saw five people who could not stand up. And there were other people who were in small bits. There was one man without a stomach shouting: 'Where are the police?"'
Exactly a week ago, 90 people died when two Russian airliners crashed almost simultaneously in what officials believe was the work of suicide bombers.
Russian officials have described that air disaster as a terrorist act and have pointed the finger at Chechen rebels who have been battling Moscow rule for more than a decade.
Hours before the air crashes, a bomb had exploded at a bus stop in southern Moscow injuring three people. Tass quoted its police source as saying the explosive device used in southern Moscow and Tuesday's bomb were similar.
In July last year two women suicide bombers, thought to be Chechens, killed 15 other people when they blew themselves up at an open-air rock festival at a Moscow airfield.
Six months later another female bomber killed five people near the Kremlin. (Additional reporting by Oleg Shchedrov)
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