35 die in suicide blast at Russia’s biggest airport

Reuters/Moscow

A TV grab taken from Russian TV channel NTV shows a smoke-filled area near the blast site at Moscow’s Domodedovo international airport, shortly after an explosion

President Dmitry Medvedev vowed to track down and punish those behind the attack, which analysts said appeared to fit a pattern of bombings by Islamist militants fighting to create an independent “emirate” in Russia’s north Caucasus region.

“The explosion was right near me, I was not hit but I felt the shock wave – people were falling,” said Yekaterina Alexandrova, a translator who was waiting in the crowded arrivals area to meet a client flying in from abroad.

“Smoke started to gather – there was a lot of smoke,” she said by telephone. “Many of the injured went outside on their own in a state of shock.

“Then they began to announce information about where to exit.”

The Kremlin said that Medvedev, who has called the insurgency in the north Caucasus the biggest threat to Russia’s security, was delaying a trip to the Davos international business forum in Switzerland.

The rebels have vowed to take the bombing campaign to the Russian heartland, hitting transport and economic targets.

“Security will be strengthened at large transport hubs,” Medvedev wrote on Twitter. “We mourn the victims of the terrorist attack at Domodedovo airport.

The organisers will be tracked down and punished.”

Russia’s rouble-dominated stock market MICEX fell by nearly 2% following the blast, which ripped through the arrivals hall.

Twitter users posted mobile video phone footage of dozens of people lying on the floor as thick smoke filled the terminal hall and a fire burned along one wall.

Airport staff were shown using flash lights to pick their way through the chaotic scene taped immediately after the blast. Later videos showed emergency workers wheeling injured people out of the terminal on stretchers.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who shares power in a “tandem” arrangement with the less influential Medvedev, has staked his political reputation on quelling rebellion in the north Caucasus.

Putin launched a war in late 1999 in Chechnya to topple a secessionist government.

That campaign achieved its immediate objective and helped him to the presidency months later; but since then the insurgency has spread to neighbouring areas of Ingushetia and Dagestan.

“It does not ... bode well for Russian ties to the North Caucasus and is yet another sign that what Putin started in 1999 by invading the rebellious republic of Chechnya has come home to roost again in the Russian capital,” said Glen Howard, president of the US Jamestown Foundation research institution.

“The bomb blast at Domodedevo will further strengthen the view among the Russian elite that Putin is losing control over security in the capital, which plays into the hands of his enemies.”

Analysts say that rebels are planning to increase their violent campaign in the run up to 2012 presidential elections, that may well see Putin returning to the presidency.

Security has been beefed up at Moscow’s other two airports, which will also receive diverted passengers who were flying towards Domodedovo, media reported.

Moscow suffered its worst attack in six years in March 2010 when two female suicide bombers from Dagestan set off explosives in the metro, killing 40 people.