TERROR ON RUSSIAN SUBWAY
Suicide bomber kills 11 in SSt. Petersburg during Putin’s visit
A suspected suicide bomber struck a Russian subway train Monday, killing 11 people and wounding 45 in St. Petersburg — in a blast that coincided with a hometown visit by President Vladimir Putin.
An unexploded bomb was also later found hidden in a fire extinguisher at a nearby subway station and defused, Russia’s National AntiTerrorist Committee said.
Police suspect a 23-year old man from a former Soviet state in Central Asia was behind the deadly explosion, Russia’s Interfax news agency reported late Monday.
The unidentified man had links to radical Islamists and is suspected of carrying a bomb onto the train in a backpack, a law-enforcement source told Interfax.
He is also believed to have planted the device that didn’t blow up, which was packed with ball bearings.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
President Trump called the deadly explosion “absolutely a terrible thing” and said, “It’s happening all over the world.”
Earlier Monday, Russian news media had said authorities were seeking two suspects, one of whom was recorded by surveillance cameras.
Images posted online showed a bearded man wearing a long black coat and brimless black hat typical of those worn in Russia’s Muslim regions.
That man later turned himself in to police, insisting he was innocent, and he was being questioned by investigators, according to reports.
The explosion, around 2:40 p.m. local time, ripped a huge hole in the side of a subway car shortly after it pulled out of the Sennaya Ploshchad station in central St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city.
The motorman drove the damaged train to the next station, Technological Institute, where video showed victims sprawled on the platform as they were treated by fellow passengers and emergency workers.
A St. Petersburg resident who was at the station described the chaos and carnage.
“I saw a lot of smoke, a crowd making its way to the escalators, people with blood — and other people’s insides on their clothes, bloody faces,” Leonid Chaika said in a phone interview. “Many were crying,” he said. A woman who was on a subway car that passed through the station moments later said the scene was horrifying.
“Our train slowed down a bit, and one woman started having hysterics when she saw people lying on the platform, blackened, in some places with no clothes, burned,” Anna Sventik of St. Petersburg said.
Russia’s Investigative Committee hailed the motorman for not stopping in the tunnel, saying the move “allowed for promptly starting the evacuation and providing assistance to the injured,” and “helped prevent a heavier death toll,” Russia’s Tass news agency reported.
Putin, a native of St. Peters- burg, was in the city on Monday to meet with Belarussian leader Alexander Lukashenko.
State television showed Putin placing a large bouquet of red roses at an impromptu memorial near the entrance to the Technological Institute station.
He did not speak to reporters, but earlier in the day pledged assistance for the victims and their families.
Russia has been the target of a string of terrorist attacks in recent years by Chechen separatists and radical Islamists, including the 2015 bombing of a Russian airliner over Egypt by ISIS, which killed all 244 people on board.
Reports by Western news media have suggested Russian security forces were behind a series of September 1999 apartment-building bombings that killed more than 300 and helped Putin consolidate power.
Putin has called those reports “raving madness.”