Putin sends in the Cossacks
Moscow – Russia was on red alert and many New Year celebrations were cancelled after a second suicide bombing in the city of Volgograd in 24 hours killed 14 people.
The Kremlin ordered Cossack volunteers, notorious for their nationalist leanings, to join police with dogs in the city hunting for terrorists who might still be at large.
Volgograd was reeling from Sunday’s bombing of its railway station, in which 17 people died, when another suicide bomber targeted a trolley bus in the city centre during the morning rush hour.
The bus was packed with students on their way to their last classes before the New Year break. At least 28 people were injured, including a five- month- old baby, a pregnant woman and two 16- year- old girls.
‘‘ I heard the glass shattering in the first two storeys of the building,’’ Alina Averyasova, a witness, told reporters. ‘‘ I looked out of the window. It was still dark, and I saw a bus that was ripped by a blast and people were running away from it screaming,’’
The attacks raise concerns about security at the Winter Olympics in Sochi, which militants have vowed to target.
President Vladimir Putin attended an emergency meeting with the heads of the Interior Ministry and the FSB, the country’s secret service. They ordered a ‘‘ special security regime’’ of beefed- up patrols for Volgograd.
Widespread raids on the homes of suspects are expected to take place across the North Caucasus region.
The FSB chief, Alexander Bortnikov, then flew to Volgograd, formerly known as Stalingrad, where he asked citizens to be understanding of the need for spot checks. ‘‘ It’s necessary measure,’’ he said. As well as the Cossacks, conscripts from the Interior Ministry’s armed forces, often used for crowd control, will help to bolster the regular police forces. A government spokesman said that New Year, the
a favourite holiday for many Russians, was effectively cancelled. Volgo- grad declared a period of mourning until January 3, with some politicians saying that it should be extended across the whole country.
Russian investigators were working on the assumption that the two attacks were co- ordinated by suicide bombers sent by the Islamic militant leader Doku Umarov.
‘‘ The explosives on the trolley bus were detonated by a male suicide bomber, fragments of whose body have been found and taken away for genetic analysis to establish his identity,’’ said Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for Russia’s Investigative Committee.
About 4kg of TNT- equiv- alent
ex- plosive had gone into the bomb, and the material was identical to that used in the station blast, he said. ‘‘ This confirms the theory that the two attacks are linked. It is possible that they were prepared in the same place.’’
Veronika Skvortsova, the Health Minister, said that the victims had ‘‘ burns, multiple traumas, blast injuries. If needed, they will be airlifted to Moscow’’.
The radio station Echo of Moscow said the authorities suspected that the bomber was a known Slav convert to Islam and would take a blood sample from his father to see if it matched DNA from the remains on the bus.
A woman suicide bomber was initially thought to have been responsible for the blast at the railway station, which killed a guard and passengers who were trying to file with their luggage through a metaldetector arch. However, later news reports suggested that the culprit may have been a man.
The use of metal detector arches at railway stations and airports is now being reconsidered in Russia, as they encourage a build- up of people at busy times.
The crowds at Volgograd station would mostly have been trying to get home to their families in time for New Year, which for Russians is as significant as Christmas is in the West.
The two blasts, the deadliest since suicide bombers killed 37 people at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport in 2011, are a significant challenge to Putin in the run- up to the Olympics, which open in Sochi on February 7 and in which he has staked vast political capital.
In St Petersburg, authorities announced that they were cancelling festivities.