* Two bombs, 40mins apart, detonated during morning rush hour
* At least 37 people dead, 65 injured
* Chechen Muslims claimed responsibility. Rouble falls
Two female suicide bombers killed at least 37 people and injured 65 by targeting two packed Moscow tube trains during the busy rush hour today.
President Dmitry Medvedev declared Russia would act ‘without compromise’ to root out terrorists as he ordered airports to be put on alert and security to be stepped up throughout the country.
The two bombs are the worst attack on the Russian capital for six years and no group has yet claimed responsibility.
But suspicion has fallen on Muslim militants from the North Caucasus, where the Kremlin is fighting a growing Islamist insurgency spreading from Chechnya to neighbouring Dagestan and Ingushetia.
Witnesses spoke of panic at the two underground stations this morning after the blasts as people fell over each other in dense smoke and dust, trying to escape.
In scenes that will have been chillingly familiar to Londoners after the July 7 bombings in 2005, bloodied and injured passengers emerged onto the streets looking bewildered.
Scroll down for video report
The first explosion tore through the second carriage of a metro train just before 8am as it stood at the Lubyanka station, close to the headquarters of Russia’s main domestic security service FSB. It killed at least 23 people.
About 40 minutes later, another blast in the second carriage of a train waiting at the Park Kultury metro station, opposite Gorky Park, killed 12 to 14 more people.
One passenger told the RIA news agency: ‘I was in the middle of the train when somewhere in the first or second carriage there was a loud blast. I felt the vibrations reverberate through my body.
‘People were yelling like hell. There was a lot of smoke and in about two minutes everything was covered in smoke.’
Another called Alexei added: ‘I was moving up on the escalator when I heard a loud bang, a blast. A door near the passage way arched, was ripped out and a cloud of dust came down on the escalator.
‘People started running, panicking, falling on each other,’ he said.
Some of the injured were airlifted to emergency hospitals in helicopters.
Dozens of commuters were helped from each station to waiting ambulances.
Surveillance camera footage posted on the internet showed several motionless bodies lying on the floor or slumped against the wall in Lubyanka station lobby and emergency workers crouched over victims, trying to treat them.
Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov told reporters that female suicide bombers had carried out the attacks.
Prosecutors said they had opened a ‘terrorism investigation’ after forensic experts found the remains of a female bomber.
The Russian rouble fell to 34.25 from 34.13 against the central bank’s euro-dollar basket, on concern the blasts could indicate the start of a bombing campaign against Russian cities.
Russian equity markets were little changed, with the rouble denominated MICEX index up 0.04 percent.
Medvedev ordered officials to fight terrorism ‘without hesitation, to the end’.
In a nod to accusations of Russian troops acting with brutality against civilians in Chechnya, he said human rights must be respected during police operations.
The President will make a statement to the nation later today, according to a Kremlin source. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is being updated regularly on developments.
Gordon Brown was ‘appalled’ by the attacks and has sent a message of ‘condolence and support’ to Medvedev, Downing Street said.
The current death toll makes it the worst attack on Moscow since February 2004, when a suicide bombing killed at least 39 people and wounded more than 100 on a metro train.
Chechen separatists were blamed for that attack and suspicions are likely to focus on the North Caucasus where rebel leader Doku Umarov, who is fighting for an Islamic emirate embracing the whole region, vowed on Feb 15 to take the war to Russian cities.
‘Blood will no longer be limited to our (Caucasus) cities and towns. The war is coming to their cities,’ the Chechen rebel leader said in an interview on the unofficial Islamist website.
The Chechen rebellion began in the 1990s as a largely ethnic nationalist movement, fired by a sense of injustice over the transportation of Chechens to Central Asia, with enormous loss of life, by dictator Josef Stalin.
In recent years, Russian officials say Islamic militants from outside Russia have joined the campaign lending it a new intensity.
Russian leaders had declared victory in their battle with Chechen separatists who fought two wars with Moscow.
But while violence subsided in Chechnya, it has spread and intensified in neighbouring Dagestan and Ingushetia, where clan rivalries overlap with criminal gangs and Islamist militants.
Vladimir Putin cemented his power in 1999 in launching an ultimately successful war to overthrow a separatist government lodged in the Chechen capital Grozny.
Russian leaders fear the loss of this region endangering energy transit routes could destabilise other areas in a country spanning 11 time zones.
‘I was in the middle of the train when somewhere in the first or second carriage there was a loud blast. I felt the vibrations reverberate through my body,’ an unidentified man who was on the train at Park Kultury told RIA news agency in a video interview.
The Moscow subway system is one of the world’s busiest, carrying around seven million passengers on an average workday, and is a key element in running the sprawling and traffic-choked city.
The blasts practically paralysed movement on the city centre’s main roads, as emergency vehicles sped to the stations.
Helicopters hovered overhead the Park Kultury station area, which is next to the city’s renowned Gorky Park.
Passengers, many of them in tears, streamed out of the station, one man exclaiming over and over: ‘This is how we live!’
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let’s wait a bit longer to see what really happened.
it could be “russia’s 9/11”.
to use the nukes against whom? i would suggest they drop them on the “dead sea”, so it makes a fair effect/use.
Russia has nuclear bombs I suggest they use them. The world can do without “the religion of peace” and their fanatics.