By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
Initial reports are claiming at least 31 people have been killed and more than 130 others injured when suspected Islamic suicide bombers blew themselves today up in a crowded arrivals area in Moscow’s Domodedovo airport.
Reuters and other news sources are reporting that President Dmitry Medvedev is vowing to track down and punish those responsible for the explosion, which experts say fits the pattern of bombings by Islamist militants who are fighting to create an independent “emirate” in Russia’s north Caucus region.
Investigators say the explosion took place in the lounge area next to the international departure zone.
“There is the smell of smoke at that section. No announcements have been made yet through loudspeakers,” passengers are reporting via Twitter. Other Twitter users citing emergency staff at the scene said up to 70 people may have been killed.
“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, to Reuters.
“Smoke started to gather – there was a lot of smoke,” she said by telephone. “Many of the injured went outside on their own in a state of shock. Then they began to announce information about where to exit.”
Cell phone footage coming out of the scene show dozens of people lying on the floor as thick smoke filled the terminal hall and a fire burns along one wall. Airport staff are seen combing through the area with flashlights while emergency workers wheel the injured away on stretchers.
President Medvedev, who has called the insurgency in the north Caucasus the biggest threat to Russia’s security, is delaying a trip to the Davos international business forum in Switzerland to tend to the aftermath of what appears to be a devastating terrorist attack on that nation.
Matthew Clement, a Russia analyst at IHS Global Insight, says the attack is “almost certainly the work of Islamist militants operating out of Russia’s North Caucasus region,” noting that militants, a jihadist group operating under the name of the North Caucus Emirate, have increased the “temp and scale” of their attacks over the past three years.
“Although the majority of attacks undertaken by the insurgents are aimed against the security forces and government officials in the North Caucasus itself (in particular the republics of Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia and Kabardino-Balkaria), attacks have increasingly been aimed at high-profile targets across Russia, as illustrated by the March 2010 double suicide attack on the Moscow metro system,” Clements said.
Domodedovo airport would represent an appealing target for such militants, he said, because it is Russia’s busiest airport, serves international passengers and has a high density of potential civilian targets.
Security was last breached at Domodedovo airport in 2004 when suicide bombers bribed their way through security checks to board two passenger planes which they subsequently brought down with the loss of 90 passengers.
Developing . . .
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