St. Petersburg subway station becomes scene from ‘hell’
Russians search for clues in metro explosion
It was standing room only on the packed metro train as Polina, a St. Petersburg student, boarded at 2:20 p.m. local time on Monday.
Just after the southbound train passed the bustling intersection station of Sennaya Ploshchad, the carriage was shaken by a “thundering clap” that filled the metro car with smoke. “The explosion went off between stations. There was a thundering clap, followed by a strong smell and smoke,” she said. “We all moved to the opposite end of the wagon, people jammed together and two women passed out. This all was happening while the train was still moving, it didn’t stop,” she told Gazeta.ru.
“Everyone got out at Technologichesky Institute station. There, we saw that the neighbouring wagon was shattered, the windows blown out, no light, blood,” she added.
Eleven people had been killed in the explosion that ripped through the tightly packed commuters. At least 50 more had been wounded.
Rescue workers and witnesses who saw the stricken train rolling out of the tunnel into the next station described scenes from “hell,” with passengers emerging covered in blood and with burnt hair.
Inside the twisted remains of the carriage, body parts were found strewn around among the wounded.
Amid the smoke, the wreckage, and the dead, survivors attempted to help the more seriously injured. One woman, her brown coat spattered in blood, knelt down to attend to prone male victim lying on the platform in a desperate attempt to save his life.
It took minutes for news to reach Strelna, a few kilometres down the Gulf of Finland coast, where Vladimir Putin was about to meet with Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus.
Quickly adapting his prepared remarks, the Russian president told his guest, attendant journalists, and the nation, that he had the situation under control.
“It’s not yet clear what caused this, so it’s premature to speak about it. The investigation will establish that. We will look at all possibilities — technical, criminal, or terrorist,” he said.
As the afternoon wore on, it seemed clear the first two possibilities had been eliminated.
First witnesses, then CCTV footage, emerged of a man who entered the carriage at the Sennaya Ploshchad station, and put a briefcase — some sources say a rucksack — on the floor, and quickly stepped off again.
“There was an explosion on the track, a guy left his briefcase on the train car, exited the car, and moved to another train car. Just one car,” one survivor said in a text message to a friend.
Inside the bag, investigators said, was a small homemade bomb containing explosives packed tightly with metal nuts and bolts — designed to cause maximum damage to his human targets.
A second bomb, disguised as a fire extinguisher, was later found at the Ploshchad Vosstanaya metro station, which serves the mainline railway station that connects St. Petersburg with Moscow.
The device, which apparently failed to explode, was reported to contain about one kilogram of TNT equivalent, prompting speculation it was intended as the main attack.
The Investigative Committee, Russia’s senior security agency, opened a terrorism probe and issued search warrants for two people.
The suspects were believed to have each planted one of the devices, the Interfax news agency reported.
St. Petersburg last suffered the nightmare of terrorism in October 2015, which 224 people were killed by a bomb on a passenger jet bringing tourists home from Egypt.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant claimed responsibility for that attack, calling it revenge for Russia’s military intervention in Syria.
Monday’s blast was the most deadly domestic attack outside the North Caucasus since two suicide bombers killed 32 people using public transport in the southern city of Volgograd in 2013.
Immediate suspicion will fall on the same groups that hit Volgograd, Moscow and other cities over the past two decades: Islamists radicalized by the insurgency that emerged from the brutal Chechen wars of the 1990s and 2000s.
If so, it will be viewed as a worrying sign that a scourge that had all but been eliminated is back.