Friday, Jul. 11, 2003. Page 1 The Moscow Times

Bomb Explodes on Tverskaya, Sapper Killed

By Oksana Yablokova
Staff Writer  

Reuters

Television images showing FSB sapper Georgy Trofimov, 29, trying to defuse the bomb in the sports bag early Thursday morning and the explosion, which killed him instantly.
 
A bomb exploded Thursday on 1st Tverskaya-Yamskaya Ulitsa in the city center, killing an FSB sapper trying to defuse it, in an attack the Interior Ministry linked to the recent double suicide bombings and said was organized by a terrorist ring training female suicide bombers.

The Basmanny district court authorized the arrest late Thursday of a Chechen woman detained in the latest attack. She was identified as Zarema Muzhikhoyeva, a 22-year-old ethnic Ingush from the Chechen village of Assinovskaya.

Muzhikhoyeva tried to enter the upscale Imbir restaurant at 16 1st Tverskaya-Yamskaya Ulitsa just after 11 p.m. Wednesday when security guards stopped her and called the police, a police spokeswoman said.

Their suspicions were aroused because she was carrying a black sports bag and acting in an agitated manner, she said.

Police officers arrived at the scene minutes later and asked Muzhikhoyeva for her passport. But she refused and threatened to detonate a bomb, which she said was in her bag.

"We said, 'Let's carefully take a look at what is in your bag,' looked inside and saw wires and some kind of button," police sergeant Mikhail Galtsev said on Rossia television.

Muzhikhoyeva then tried to detonate the bomb, but the officers managed to handcuff her first, Rossia reported.

Ivan Sekretarev / AP


Georgy Trofimov visiting Tushino on Saturday.
 
Federal Security Service sappers, who arrived shortly after the police, placed the bag on a cleared-off section of the sidewalk and spent more than two hours trying to disarm it, the police spokeswoman said.

After a remote-controlled robot made several failed attempts to defuse it, the FSB called in one of its best sappers, Georgy Trofimov. The 29-year-old major had defused bombs at the Dubrovka theater after the hostage crisis in October and had disarmed the partially exploded bomb worn by the first suicide bomber Saturday.

It was 2:15 a.m.

Trofimov, wearing a bulky protective suit, approached the bag and started to pick it up. At that moment, the explosives went off in a burst of smoke and sparks, throwing him back several meters and killing him instantly.

The bomb contained the equivalent of 400 grams of TNT and was packed with ball bearings, the police said.

The force of the blast shattered dozens of shop windows and set off car alarms along Tverskaya.

It was unclear what set the bomb off.

"There always is a very small chance that an accidental explosion will occur," Vladimir Yeryomin, the deputy head of the FSB's Criminology Institute, told NTV television.

Police and FSB officials reached by telephone declined to comment.

Some local media speculated that the bomb might have been detonated by remote control or a timer.

Adolf Mishuyev, an explosives expert at the Moscow State Construction Institute, said an accomplice watching the efforts to disarm the bomb could have easily decided to push the button when he saw Trofimov pick it up.

Muzhikhoyeva, who was being held Thursday night at the FSB's Lefortovo prison, had been living with an aunt in Chechnya but left in February and her whereabouts had been unknown, Itar-Tass reported, citing the police.

When she was detained, she was carrying a Nazran-Moscow plane ticket dated July 3, according to television reports.

Vladimir Filonov / MT


Georgy Trofimov visiting Tushino on Saturday.

Muzhikhoyeva's husband joined the rebels a few years ago and was killed, and her family's house was destroyed in the first Chechen war, Rossia said.

Itar-Tass reported that the police detained a suspected male accomplice later Thursday who was born in Chechnya and worked for a Moscow company.

Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov denied the report and said the police were not looking for any accomplices. Instead, Gryzlov said, they were hunting for the ringleaders of the terrorist ring that plotted Saturday's suicide bombings, which killed 14 at a rock concert in Tushino, and the most recent attack.

He said the group was training female suicide bombers to carry out attacks in Moscow and in other cities across the country.

"We have information that will enable us to shortly hunt down this unit training female suicide bombers," Gryzlov said in televised remarks. He declined to elaborate.