At least 16 dead as suicide blasts rip through Moscow rock concert

[Grojlach]

At least 16 dead as suicide blasts rip through Moscow rock concert

Sat Jul 5, 9:58 AM ET Add World - AFP to My Yahoo!
MOSCOW (AFP) - At least 16 people died and more than 20 were seriously injured when two female suicide bombers blew themselves up at a Moscow rock concert, with suspicions immediately falling on rebels from breakaway Chechnya.
The two women blew themselves up at a ticket booth at the entrance to the outdoor concert at Tushino airfield in northwestern Moscow after police prevented them from entering the site, police said.
Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov blamed the blasts on Chechen separatists fighting to sever their mainly Muslim republic from the rest of Russia.
"Today the president signed a decree on elections in Chechnya, and one can think that these attacks are linked to this event," Gryzlov told journalists at the scene.
A Chechen passport was found on one of the two suicide bombers, he said.
ITAR-TASS news agency earlier quoted doctors and police as saying that the death toll had risen to 20, while Interfax quoted police as saying the death toll stood at 17.
More than 22 people were hospitalized, most with shrapnel wounds from the bombs. Gryzlov said one woman alone carried a suicide belt packed with at least one kilogram (2.2 pounds) of explosives.
"All I saw was a cloud of smoke," a young concert-goer, who gave her name only as Maria, told AFP.
Concert organizers said around 40,000 people were attending the popular annual rock concert at Tushino.
"There was a blast and then my ears began to hurt," said one man interviewed by Rossiya television, visibly shaken and smoking a cigarette with blood splattered on his left hand.
The FSB security services told Russian news agencies that a third blast went off at a nearby market, but no further details were immediately available.
President Vladimir Putin earlier Saturday signed a decree setting presidential elections in Chechnya for October 5, pressing ahead with his controversial peace plan for the war-torn Caucasus republic.
He launched the plan with a March referendum, in which Chechens voted to confirm Chechnya's place within the Russian Federation.
That vote prompted Putin to declare that the war between separatist rebels and federal troops had come to an end.
But separatists have followed through on pledges to disrupt the referendum results, carrying out regular suicide attacks over the past few months that have killed some 100 people.
Women Chechens comprised the bulk of a band of rebels that held 800 people hostage at a Moscow theater for three days in October.
All 41 hostage-takers and 129 hostages died in that attack, most from a powerful gas pumped into the theater to knock out the hostage-takers ahead of a raid by federal troops.
The hostage crisis brought the Chechen war to the heart of Russian capital for the first time since a series of fatal apartment blasts in August 1999, which were blamed on Chechen rebels.
Those blasts prompted Putin, then prime minister, to send federal troops back into the breakaway republic to crush the separatists. They have been fighting a brutal war with rebels ever since.

Source: Yahoo! News

[johnny]

Yeah, this is all so sad. And to think that the day before this happened, Putin made a statement, in which he said the the "Chechen issue" was completely under control. I guess he got slapped in the face with his own words this time.