10 killed, scores injured in St. Petersburg blast

opened a probe into a suspected “act of terror” Monday after 10 people were killed and dozens more injured in a blast that rocked the Saint Petersburg metro.

Authorities shut down the metro system in Russia’s second city as security services said they had also defused a bomb at a second metro station.

Russia’s Investigative Committee said it was probing an “act of terror” but added it would look into all other possible causes of the blast.

Pictures screened on national television showed the door of a train carriage blown out, as bloodied bodies lay strewn on a station platform.

Above ground, emergency services vehicles rushed to the scene at the Technological Institute metro station, a key transport hub in the city centre.

Health minister Veronika Skvortsova said the blast had killed seven people on the spot, with three more succumbing to their injuries later.

Thirty nine people were hospitalised, including a 15-year-old girl, Skvortsova said.

“My mom was in the metro, I don’t know what’s happened to her, I can’t get hold of her,” one woman, Natalia, told AFP outside the station as she was trying to make a phone call on her mobile.

Pensioner Vyacheslav Veselov told AFP he had seen four bodies at the station.

“A station attendant in tears called on the men to help carry the bodies,” he said.

The blast occurred in a train carriage as it was travelling between the Technological Institute and Vosstaniya Square stations at 2:40pm local time, said the spokesman of Russia’s anti-terrorist committee (NAK) Andrei Przhezdomsky.

The NAK committee later confirmed security services had found another explosive device at the Vosstaniya Square metro station. This device did not explode and it was immediately “neutralised.”

CONTINUED ON P 6 DELHI METRO ON ALERT ››P7