Russia train bomber was from Kyrgyzstan
The DNA of Akbarzhon Jalilov, 22, was found on the bag with the second bomb in the Monday metro blast that killed 14
ST PETERSBURG // Russian investigators yesterday named the St Petersburg metro bomber as Akbarzhon Jalilov, 22, a Russian citizen born in Kyrgyzstan.
No further details were given but Jalilov’s name and year of birth coincided with a statement from the Kyrgyz security services, which identified the bomber yesterday as a naturalised Russian citizen from Kyrgyzstan.
Russia’s health minister yesterday raised the death toll from 11 to 14 and said 49 people were still in hospital.
City authorities said there were several foreigners among the victims but declined to give further details.
However, Kazakhstan’s foreign ministry said one of its citizens was killed in the attack.
The bomb blast tore through a train under Russia’s second-largest city on Monday, a day when president Vladimir Putin was in town for a visit of his native city.
Within two hours of the blast, authorities had found and deactivated another bomb at another train station, a major transfer point for passengers on two lines and serving the railway line to Moscow.
The bomber was also killed and Russian investigators said traces of Jalilov’s DNA were found on the bag containing the second explosive device.
“The conclusion of genetic evaluation and footage from surveillance cameras enable the investigation to conclude that the man who carried out the act of terror on the carriage was the one who left the bag with the explosive device in the Vosstaniya Square station,” said the investigators.
No one had claimed responsibility for the attack, but authorities believed the bomber was linked to radical groups and carried the explosives on to the metro train in a rucksack.
The entire St Petersburg metro system, which serves a city of 5 million people, was shut down and evacuated, but partial service resumed after about six hours.
Mr Putin yesterday joined hundreds of St Petersburg residents in laying flowers outside the station near where the blast occurred.
Every corner and windowsill at the ornate, Soviet-built Sennaya Square station was covered with red and white carnations. Four metro stations were closed again yesterday because of a bomb threat, but were later reopened.
A train driver, Alexander Kavernin, 50, who has worked on the metro for 14 years, said he heard the sound of a blast while his train was running. He called security and drove his train on to the next station in accord with the emergency instructions.
“I had no time to think about fear at that moment,” he said. Mr Kavernin’s decision was praised by authorities as aiding evacuation efforts and reducing the danger to passengers who would have had to walk along the electrified tracks.
Oleg Alexeyev, 53, who trains sniffer dogs for the police, went to the Technological Institute station yesterday to lay flowers in memory of those who died near by.
“I travelled on the same route this morning just to see how it felt and think about life. You begin to feel the thin line about life and death,” he said.
St Petersburg is home to a large diaspora of migrants from the former Soviet republics of Central Asia who fled poverty and unemployment in their countries.
Although most Central Asian migrants in Russia have work permits or work illegally, thousands of them have received Russian citizenship in the past decades.
Russian authorities have rejected calls to impose visas on Central Asian nationals, reasoning that having millions of jobless men across the border from Russia would be a bigger security threat.
Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, led a service at Moscow’s main cathedral yesterday for those killed in the blast.
“This terrorist act is a threat to all of us, all our nation,” he said.
In the past two decades, Russian trains and aircraft have been frequent targets of attack, usually blamed on extremist militants.
The last confirmed attack was in October 2015 when ISIL militants shot down a Russian airliner heading from an Egyptian resort to St Petersburg, killing all 224 people on board.