Suicide bomber kills 35 at Russia's biggest airport

REUTERS

MOSCOW : A suicide bomber killed at least 35 people at Russia's biggest airport on Monday in an attack that bore the hallmarks of militants fighting for an Islamist state in the north Caucasus region.

President Dmitry Medvedev vowed to track down and punish those behind the bombing, which also injured about 130 people, including foreigners, during the busy late afternoon at Moscow's Domodedovo airport. Dense smoke filled the hall and a fire burned along one wall.

"The explosion was right near me, I was not hit but I felt the shock wave -- people were falling," said Yekaterina Alexandrova, a translator who was waiting in the crowded arrivals area to meet a client flying in from abroad.

Thick drops of blood were scattered across the snow-covered tarmac outside the arrivals hall, where traces of shrapnel were found.

"I heard a loud boom... we thought someone had just dropped something. But then I saw casualties being carried away," a check-in attendant who gave her name as Elena told Reuters at Domodedovo, which is some 22 km (14 miles) southeast of Moscow.

The Kremlin said Medvedev, who has called the insurgency in the north Caucasus the biggest threat to Russia's security, delayed his departure for the Davos international business forum in Switzerland.

The rebels have vowed to take their bombing campaign from the violence-wracked north Caucasus to the Russian heartland, hitting transport and economic targets. They have also leveled threats at the 2014 Winter Olympics, scheduled for Sochi, a region they claim as part of their "emirate."

"Security will be strengthened at large transport hubs," Medvedev wrote on Twitter. "We mourn the victims of the terrorist attack at Domodedovo airport. The organizers will be tracked down and punished."

No group has yet taken responsibility for the attack, but dozens of Internet surfers, writing in Russian, praised the suicide bomber on unofficial Islamist site kavkazcenter.com.

Russia's ruble-denominated stock market MICEX fell by nearly two percent following the blast, which ripped through the arrivals hall, but traders said they expected little long-term impact.

"It (the blast) is moving the market in the short term, but there is no fundamental reason for the market to fall. If you remember, the market didn't react strongly to (previous blasts)," said trader Alexei Bachurin from Renaissance Capital.

SPREADING INSURRECTION

Twitter users posted mobile video phone footage of dozens of people lying on the floor as thick smoke filled the hall and a fire burned along one wall.

Airport staff were shown using flash lights to pick their way through the chaotic scene taped off immediately after the blast. Later videos showed emergency workers wheeling injured people out of the terminal on stretchers.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who shares power in a 'tandem' arrangement with the less influential Medvedev, has staked his political reputation on quelling rebellion in the north Caucasus.

He launched a war in late 1999 in Chechnya to topple a secessionist government. That campaign achieved its immediate aim and helped him to the presidency months later; but since then insurgency has spread to neighbouring Ingushetia and Dagestan.

"It does not ... bode well for Russian ties to the North Caucasus and is yet another sign that what Putin started in 1999 by invading the rebellious republic of Chechnya has come home to roost again in the Russian capital," said Glen Howard, president of the U.S. Jamestown Foundation research institution.

"The bomb blast at Domodedevo will further strengthen the view among the Russian elite that Putin is losing control over security in the capital, which plays into the hands of his enemies."

Moscow recently saw riots involving thousands of Russian nationalists who attacked passersby of non-Slavic appearance, many of whom were from the north Caucasus.

Analysts say rebels are planning to increase violence in the run up to 2012 presidential elections, that may well see Putin returning to the presidency.

Security has been tightened at Moscow's other two airports, which will also receive diverted passengers who were flying toward Domodedovo, media reported.

Moscow suffered its worst attack in six years in March 2010 when two female suicide bombers from Dagestan set off explosives in the metro, killing 40 people.

The worst incident involving north Caucasus rebels took place in 2004 when militants seized control of a school in Beslan. When Russian troops stormed the building in an attempt to end a siege, 331 hostages, half of them children, were killed.