National Post (National Edition)
A SCENE FROM ‘HELL’
11 KILLED, AT LEAST 50 WOUNDED IN ST. PETERSBURG SUBWAY EXPLOSION
It was standing room only on the packed metro train as Polina, a St. Petersburg student, boarded at 2:20 p.m. on Monday afternoon.
Just after the southbound train passed the bustling intersection station of Sennaya Ploshchad, it 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 Technologic-hesky Institute station. There, we saw that the neighbouring wagon was shattered, the windows blown out, no light, blood,” she added.
Eleven people were 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 a prone male victim lying on the platform in a desperate attempt to save his life.
It took minutes for news to reach the settlement of Strelna, a few kilometres down the Gulf of Finland coast, where Vladimir Putin was preparing to face the cameras at the beginning of a meeting with Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus.
Quickly adapting his prepared remarks, the Russian president told his guest, 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 eyewitness accounts, 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 explosive 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.
That device, which apparently failed to explode, was reported to contain about one kilogram of TNT equivalent, prompting speculation that it was intended as the main attack.
The Investigative Committee, Russia’s senior security agency, opened a terrorism investigation and issued search warrants for two suspects believed to be connected with the attack.
The suspects, who have not been named, 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, when 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 in Russia 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 radicalised 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.
THERE WAS AN EXPLOSION ON THE TRACK, A GUY LEFT HIS BRIEFCASE ON THE TRAIN CAR, EXITED THE CAR.