|
|
[國際新聞] Second deadly bomb blast rocks
Second deadly bomb blast rocks Russian city, killing at least 10
Volgograd attacks highlight country’s security challenge ahead of Olympics
MOSCOW — Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry says at least 10 people have been killed in a bus explosion in Volgograd, a day after a suicide bombing that killed at least 16 at a railway station in the city.
The explosions put the city on edge and highlighted the terrorist threat that Russia is facing as it prepares to host the Winter Games in February. Volgograd is about 650 kilometers northeast of Sochi, where the Olympics are to be held.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for either explosion, which came several months after Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov called for new attacks against civilian targets in Russia, including the Sochi Games.
On Sunday, a suicide bomber struck a busy railway station in the southern Russian city, killing at least 16 people and wounding scores more, officials said.
Suicide bombings have rocked Russia for years, but many have been contained to the North Caucasus, the centre of an insurgency seeking an Islamist state in the region. Until recently Volgograd was not a typical target, but the city formerly known as Stalingrad has now been struck twice in two months — suggesting militants may be using the transportation hub as a renewed way of showing their reach outside their restive region.
Volgograd, which lies close to volatile Caucasus provinces, is 900 kilometres south of Moscow and about 650 kilometres northeast of Sochi, a Black Sea resort flanked by the North Caucasus Mountains.
The bombing highlights the daunting security challenge Russia will face in fulfilling its pledge to make the Sochi Games the “safest Olympics in history.” The government has deployed tens of thousands of soldiers, police and other security personnel to protect the Games.
Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird described the bombing as a “heinous crime” and called for those responsible to be identified and brought to justice.
“Canada strongly condemns today’s cowardly act of terrorism in Volgograd,” Baird said Sunday in a release.
“We continue to engage Russian officials in discussions on the special security arrangements that will be in place at Olympic venues, airports, border crossings and other sensitive areas,” Baird added.
Through the day, officials issued conflicting statements on casualties. They also said that the suspected bomber was a woman, but later said the attacker could have been a man.
The Interfax news agency quoted unidentified law enforcement agents as saying that footage taken by surveillance cameras indicated that the bomber was a man. It also reported that it was further proven by a torn male finger ringed by a safety pin removed from a hand grenade, which was found on the site of the explosion.
The bomber detonated explosives in front of a metal detector just beyond the station’s main entrance when a police sergeant became suspicious and rushed forward to check ID, officials said. The officer was killed by the blast, and several other policemen were wounded.
“When the suicide bomber saw a policeman near a metal detector, she became nervous and set off her explosive device,” Vladimir Markin, the spokesman for the nation’s top investigative agency, said in a statement earlier in the day. He added that the bomb contained about 10 kilograms of TNT and was rigged with shrapnel.
He later told Interfax that the attacker could have been a man, but added that the investigation was still ongoing. Another hand grenade, which didn’t explode, was also found at the site.
Markin argued that security controls prevented a far greater number of casualties at the station, which was packed with people at a time when several trains were delayed.
The Russian official confirmed 13 people and the bomber were killed on the spot, and the regional government said two other people later died at a hospital. About 40 were hospitalized, many in grave condition.
Earlier in the day, Lifenews.ru, a Russian news portal that reportedly has close links to security agencies, posted what it claimed was an image of the severed head of the “female” attacker. It said the attacker appeared to have been a woman whose two successive rebel husbands had been killed by Russian security forces in the Caucasus.
Female suicide bombers, many of whom were widows or sisters of rebels, have mounted numerous attacks in Russia. They often have been referred to as “black widows.”
In October, a female suicide bomber blew herself up on a city bus in Volgograd, killing six people and injuring about 30. Officials said that attacker came from the province of Dagestan, which has become the centre of the Islamist insurgency that has spread across the region after two separatist wars in Chechnya.
As in Sunday’s blast, her bomb was rigged with shrapnel that caused severe injuries.
Chechnya has become more stable under the grip of its Moscow-backed strongman, who incorporated many of the former rebels into his feared security force. But in Dagestan, the province between Chechnya and the Caspian Sea, Islamic insurgents who declared an intention to carve out an Islamic state in the region mount near daily attacks on police and other officials.
Rights groups say that authorities’ tough response involving arbitrary arrests, torture and killings of terror suspects has fuelled the rebellion.
The Kremlin replaced Dagestan’s provincial chief earlier this year, and the new leader abandoned his predecessor’s attempts at reconciliation.
The bombing followed Friday’s explosion in the city of Pyatigorsk in southern Russian, where a car rigged with explosives blew up on a street, killing three.
The Interior Ministry ordered police to beef up patrols at railway stations and other transport facilities across Russia. |
|
發表於 2013-12-30 06:41
| 
