| International News Moscow car blast kills at least 6 Explosion near subway station also injures 20 Dmitry Shalganov / AP A man wounded in the explosion outside a Moscow subway station is treated at the scene Tuesday. The Associated Press Updated: 3:54 p.m. ET Aug. 31, 2004MOSCOW - Explosions near a busy Moscow subway station in a shopping district Tuesday night killed six people and injured at least 20. The Itar-TASS news agency said authorities blamed a woman suicide bomber. Initial reports said a single car blew up, but witnesses said they heard at least two explosions. The blast struck about 8:15 p.m. in an area between the Rizhskaya station and a nearby supermarket- department store complex. Scores of emergency and police vehicles rushed to the scene, and police cordoned off the area around the blackened car that apparently exploded between the station and the store. Police spokesman Valery Gribakin said on Russian television that six people were killed and more than 20 wounded. "There was a powerful blast and then a smaller one. I thought my roof would come off," said 30-year-old Sergei Pyslaru, who was driving nearby when the explosion occurred. Police and emergency officials could not immediately be reached by The Associated Press for comment, but Russian news agencies cited Russian officials as saying eight people died and 18 were injured, as many as 12 of them seriously. Dmitry Shalganov / AP People wounded in the Moscow explosion wait to be treated. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Alexei Borodin, 29, was out walking with his mother when he heard "a very powerful bang. Something flew past my head, I don't know what it was." "There were people lying in the square," he said. "There were pieces of bodies...We were walking through pieces of people." Borodin said he saw "about five people" who were too badly hurt to get up. "One young guy tried to get up and couldn't." The blast came a week after two Russian passenger jets crashed minutes apart after explosions on board, killing all 90 people aboard in what authorities say was a Chechen terrorist attack. Suicide bombings blamed on Chechen rebels and their supporters have hit Moscow and other parts of Russia over the past several years. In February, 41 people were killed in a rush-hour explosion on the Moscow subway that officials said was a terrorist attack. In December a female suicide bomber blew herself up outside a hotel adjacent to Red Square, killing five people and herself. Chechens voted on Sunday for a new president in the warring republic in an election that was backed by the Kremlin and intended to show stability. The election was part of the Kremlin's strategy for trying to undermine support for the separatist insurgents who have been fighting Russian forces on and off for more than a decade. Criminal underworld feuds in Russia also frequently become violent and have included car bombings in which bystanders have been killed and injured. © 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Wednesday, September 1, 2004. Page 1. The Moscow Times Suicide Bomber Kills 10 Near Metro By Simon Saradzhyan Staff Writer Dmitry Shalganov / AP Photo: A man's body lying a few meters away from two gutted cars, after a powerful bomb was detonated by a suicide bomber near the Rizhskaya metro station on Tuesday evening. A female suicide bomber blew herself up outside the Rizhskaya metro station in northern Moscow, killing at least 10 people and injuring more than 50 in an apparent terrorist attack, sending panic waves across a city already shocked by last week's near-simultaneous bombings of two airliners. Several people said they saw the bomber set off the explosive device at 8:17 p.m. and police were questioning those people late Tuesday, Interior Ministry spokesman Valery Gribakin told reporters at the scene. The witnesses told police that the woman was heading toward the metro station when she saw that police officers were checking IDs at the entrance. Having spotted the patrolmen, she turned back and the bomb went off, Gribakin said. The Federal Security Service also believe that the bomb was set off by a suicide bomber, an official at the counter-terrorism agency told Interfax. NTV reported that fragments of skin and hair were recovered near the site in what could also be evidence of a suicide attack, as a bomber's head is often torn away from the torso by the explosion. A 17-year-old boy told The Moscow Times that he saw a headless corpse among the dead bodies. He was sitting in a gambling hall some 25 meters away when the bomb went off. "I was sitting on a chair playing, and it felt like an earthquake. I ran outside and saw about five bodies, including one headless woman and people without arms and legs and people covered in blood running away," said the boy, who did not give his name. Maxim Zausalin, who was sitting with friends in a yard about 500 meters away from the metro when the bomb went off, offered a similar account. "There was quite a boom. It sounded a bit like strong thunder," he said. "Then some minutes later a young woman ran by, screaming that she saw somebody whose head and arms were torn off." He then walked to the site, or at least as close as he could get to it. "I saw three or four bodies lying on the grass. They were motionless, so I thought these people were probably dead," he said. At least 51 people were injured in the blast, 49 of them hospitalized, FSB spokesman Sergei Ignatchenko told NTV television. Twenty of the injured were in serious condition at the Sklifosovsky emergency care hospital and two children's clinics, city health officials told NTV. There were three children among the injured, they said. The bomb contained up to 1 kilogram of TNT, Mayor Yury Luzhkov told reporters at the scene. It was packed with bolts and other metal objects, police officials said. Russian media have been awash with speculation that two roommates of the two women who are believed to have brought down the Tu-134 and Tu- 154 airliners last week may have been planning to stage attacks in Moscow. Ninety people died in the two airliner explosions. The passports of two Chechen women on board the flights -- identified as Amanat Nagayeva, 30, and Satsita Dzhebirkhanova, 37 -- were found at the crash sites in the Tula and Rostov regions. Their remains have not been identified, but investigators are looking into whether they may have been the bombers. Izvestia reported Monday that the women shared an apartment with two other women in Grozny -- Nagayeva's sister Roza, 29, and Maryam Taburova, 27. Both went missing ahead of the crashes and Izvestia speculated that they could be in Moscow plotting suicide attacks. The explosive used in the bomb that went off outside the Rizhskaya metro station appeared to be similar to that used in a bomb at a bus stop on Kashirskoye Shosse on Aug. 24, police said. In retrospect, this bombing might have been carried out to draw the attention of Moscow law enforcement agencies away from transportation terminals such as airports, State Duma Security Committee chairman Gennady Gudkov told NTV. The shock wave from the explosion rocked cars driving along the Rizhskaya overpass and Prospekt Mira. "I heard the explosion -- it was very big and the ground started trembling. I looked and saw two cars burning, I was scared to death," said a young driver who was driving along Prospekt Mira across from the station. The explosion was so powerful that it was heard kilometers away, including the next subway stations on the line. The bomb severely damaged a Lada and an Audi parked between the subway station and the Krestovsky supermarket, initially causing law enforcement agencies to think that the bomb went off inside the Lada. Eyewitnesses told a reporter for Channel One television that a middle- aged man had driven the car to the parking lot and asked drivers of cars parked there to make room for his vehicle. Having parked the car in the lot between the subway station and the Krestovsky supermarket, he left the scene some five to seven minutes before the explosion. Witnesses said ambulances started to arrive at the scene within minutes after the blast and the site was soon surrounded by police as investigators and FSB bomb experts, who arrived in an orange minivan, began to sort through the carnage. Gribakin said security has been reinforced on the metro system and other vital infrastructure across the city. However, the attack will not force Moscow authorities to cancel the City Day celebrations on Sept. 1-5, Luzhkov said. Staff Writers Carl Schreck, Valeria Korchagina and Francesca Mereu contributed to this report. Kavkazmemo, 31/8/2004 Renewed violence, human rights abuses undermine credibility of presidential elections We call your attention to the statement issued by the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF) and the Moscow Helsinki Group (MHG) on August 30, 2004: The International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF) and the Moscow Helsinki Group (MHG) called into question the credibility of presidential elections in Chechnya that were held against a backdrop of increased violence in the conflict-torn republic. The IHF and MHG consider that minimum international standards for holding free and fair elections do not exist in Chechnya. Moreover, the organisations express their concern that during the run-up to the election, Russian electoral authorities unfairly excluded competitors to the post to ensure the victory of the Kremlin's favoured candidate, Alu Alkhanov. In addition to the continuing widespread and pernicious practice of "disappearances", torture and extra-judicial execution of civilians that are recorded daily by human rights organisations, in the days preceding the ballot, the frequency and intensity of the armed conflict in the republic increased. On 21 August, in coordinated attacks by fighters on police stations in Grozny, dozens of Russian security forces were killed. In the course of the IHF/MHG mission to Chechnya, we learned that over a dozen civilians and over 50 law-enforcers were killed in the fighting and some thirty others were wounded. In the aftermath of the assault local human rights groups reported raids or zachistki in the Grozny region and approximately nine men taken away by Russian security forces; the fate and whereabouts of these detainees is unclear. "The brutal Chechnya conflict is crying out for a political solution", stated Aaron Rhodes, Executive Director of the IHF. "Yet manipulating democracy to produce a predetermined outcome is neither fair nor a solution", he added. "Rather it will serve to entrench both sides in this un-winnable war of attrition in which civilians continue to be the primary victims", he continued. The IHF and the MHG consider that the Russian authorities are repeating the same mistakes and violations of electoral standards as those witnessed in the election of Akhmad Kadyrov to the post of president in 2003. Organisations, such as the OSCE, condemned the 2003 presidential elections as being neither free nor fair. Kadyrov's election led not only to increased violence from Chechen fighters against Russian security forces and civilian administrators, but the creation of the Kadyrovtsy, an armed militia under the command and control of Kadyrov that engaged in serious human rights violations, including "disappearances", torture and execution against civilians. Akhmad Kadyrov was killed on 9 May 2004 by a bomb believed planted by Chechen fighters. "This second episode of the show 'Election for President in the Chechen Republic' is nothing but a bitter deja vu. The lessons of the Kadyrov experiment have clearly not been learned", stated Tanya Lokshina, Programs Director of the MHG. "Alkhanov's de facto appointment as president, in effect dictating to the Chechen people who should be their representative, will not lead to lasting peace and security in the region", she added. The IHF and the MHG call upon the international community to insist that the Russian government adheres to its obligations under international human rights and humanitarian law. In particular, the organisations note the resolution passed by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in April 2003, which highlighted the "urgent action [...] necessary to counteract the climate of impunity which has developed in the Chechen Republic over the last decade" and more specifically warned that: [...] if the efforts to bring to justice those responsible for human rights violations are not intensified, and the climate of impunity in the Chechen Republic prevails, [the Assembly should] consider proposing to the international community the setting up of an ad hoc tribunal to try war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the Chechen Republic. The IHF and the MHG strongly consider that in the intervening sixteen months since that resolution was passed, no urgent or effective action been undertaken by the Russian authorities to investigate the crimes and prosecute the offenders. Moreover, the IHF and the MHG note the resolution adopted by the United Nations Human Rights Commission in April 2001, which called upon the Russian government to: [...] establish, according to recognized international standards, a national broad-based and independent commission of inquiry to investigate promptly alleged violations of human rights and breaches of international humanitarian law committed in the Republic of Chechnya of the Russian Federation in order to establish the truth and identify those responsible, with a view to bringing them to justice and preventing impunity. Despite these resolutions and an increase in violence, neither tribunal nor a credible national independent commission of inquiry have been established. The IHF and MHG call upon the Russian government to: investigate violations of international human rights and humanitarian law and prosecute the perpetrators in fair trials; and undertake urgent measures to seek a political resolution to the conflict. The IHF and MHG call upon the international community to: bring pressure to bear on the Russian government to adhere to its obligations under international human rights and humanitarian law; and to seek the implementation of resolutions adopted, inter alia, by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the United Nations Human Rights Commission to address impunity for serious human rights violations. Source: International Helsinki Federation 31 August 2004 EU slams Chechen elections, wants early parliament polls BRUSSELS : The European Commission condemned weekend presidential elections in Chechnya, and called for early parliamentary polls in the strife-torn Russian republic. While conceding that the EU had no monitors at the polls, a spokeswoman for EU external relations commissioner Chris Patten said: "We have noticed persistant reports that the .... elections were neither free nor fair. "We regret particlarly the seemingly arbitary exclusion of one of the strongest candidates from the list of those permitted to contest the elections," added the spokeswoman, Emma Udwin. "We will now be pressing for early parliamentary elections in Chechnya and for those elections to be held in a way that can be regarded as free and fair," she added, noting that in theory the parliamentary polls should be held within three months of the presidential ballots. (*) The Chechen ballots Sunday elected Kremlin-backed career police officer Alu Alkhanov win a crushing victory, but critics questioned how officials managed to report massive turnout data when polling stations had often been deserted. Alkhanov reduced the other six candidates to the status of also-rans by polling 73.48 percent, according to local election officials. His nearest rival, Movsur Khamidov, polled only 8.94 percent. - AFP |