Foreign-born Russian identified as metro bomber
RUSSIA: Russian investigators have named a Kyrgyz-born Russian citizen as the perpetrator of the deadly bombing on St Petersburg’s metro system on Tuesday.
Akbarzhon Jalilov, 22, was the attacker behind the explosion, which killed 14 people and injured at least 49 others, Russia’s investigative committee confirmed in a statement yesterday.
Jalilov also planted an unexploded device that was found and defused at another metro station shortly after the blast, the committee said, citing CCTV footage and DNA evidence found there.
Kyrgyzstan’s foreign ministry and security service said Jalilov, an ethnic Uzbek, was born in the city of Osh in 1995 and left the country at the age of 16.
The statement offered no further clarity on an earlier missive that the bombing ‘‘might’’ have been carried out by a suicide bomber.
There was also confusion about whether Jalilov or any possible accomplices were still at large.
The identification came as the death toll from the blast climbed to 14.
The victims included Irina Medyantseva, 50, an artist and doll maker, who was fatally wounded shielding her 30-year-old daughter from the blast.
‘‘They had only just got on the metro at Sennya station,’’ her husband Alexander said.
‘‘My daughter called straight away and told me what had happened. ‘‘It’s terrible.’’ He said their daughter, who had undergone surgery yesterday, was now out of danger.
Russian investigators initially said that the bomb, which was carried in a backpack and packed with shrapnel, might have been detonated by a suicide bomber whose badly damaged remains had been found at the scene.
However, the investigative committee did not confirm that remains found on the train were Jalilov’s, saying in a statement only that it believed he had ‘‘perpetrated’’ the attack.
There was also confusion about the exact identity of the killer.
CCTV footage of a man who Russian television stations said was Jalilov before the blast showed a young man in a red parka coat and carrying a rucksack.
Several Russian news agencies published pictures from a social media account of a young man with the same name, but it was not clear whether they were of the attacker.
A bearded man who was initially identified as the bomber in similar CCTV footage broadcast on Tuesday evening later turned out to be innocent.
He turned himself into police after seeing himself on television, and was later identified as Andrei Nikitin, a long distance lorry driver and former officer in the Russian airborne forces.
No group had claimed responsibility for the attack, but Russia has repeatedly been targeted by Islamist terrorists, mostly from the North Caucasus, for the past two decades.
Islamic State (Isis) has called for attacks in Russia in revenge for its military campaign in Syria.
Kyrgyzstan, a predominantly Muslim Central Asian nation of 6 million, is Russia’s close political ally and hosts a Russian military airbase.
Between 2000 and 4000 people from Central Asian countries are believed to have travelled to Syria and Iraq to join Isis and other groups in recent years, said Deirdre Tynan, central Asia project director for the International Crisis Group. – Telegraph Group