A Chechen militant claimed responsibility Wednesday for this week's
deadly subway bombings in
Moscow,
as two new suicide bomb attacks targeting police officers in southern
Russia left 12 people dead.
Doku
Umarov, who leads Islamic militants in
Chechnya and other regions in Russia's North
Caucasus, said in a video posted Wednesday on a pro-rebel Web site that
Monday's twin
suicide
attacks were an act of revenge for the killing of civilians by
Russian security forces. He warned that attacks on Russian cities will
continue.
Umarov's statement was posted after
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin
vowed to "drag out of the sewer" the terrorists who plotted the subway
bombings, which killed 39 people and injured scores of commuters during
rush hour.
Wednesday's suicide bombings in Dagestan, a volatile
southern province east
of Chechnya, could have been planned by the same group behind Moscow's
bombings, Putin said.
"I don't rule out that this is one and the same
gang," Putin said at a televised Cabinet meeting.
President Dmitry Medvedev
later called the attacks "links of the same chain."
The subway bombings in Moscow were the
first suicide attacks in
the Russian capital in six years and shocked a country that had grown
accustomed to having such violence confined to its restive southern
corner.
Umarov blamed ordinary Russians for turning a blind
eye to the killing of civilians in the
Caucasus by security forces and warned that
more attacks on Russian cities are coming.
"I promise you that the war will come to your streets
and you will feel it in your lives, feel it on your own skin," Umarov
said in a video posted on
kavkazcenter.com, a
Web site affiliated with the rebels.
Officials at
Russian law enforcement agencies refused to
comment on Umarov's claim, but the Russian security chief has
previously said that the subway bombings were carried out by militants
from the Caucasus.
Moscow police have been on high alert since the
subway attacks, beefing up roadblocks on highways leading into the city.
The agency's chief said Wednesday that thousands of officers have been
sent to patrol the subway, check on migrants from
southern provinces and
inspect warehouses that could hold arms caches.
In Wednesday's attack, a suicide bomber in a car
detonated explosives when police tried to stop the car in the town of
Kizlyar near Dagestan's border with
Chechnya,
Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev said.
"
Traffic
police followed the car and almost caught up — at that time the
blast hit," Nurgaliyev said.
As investigators and residents gathered around the
scene of the blast, a second bomber wearing a police uniform approached
and set off explosives, killing the town's police chief among others,
Nurgaliyev said.
In addition to the dead, at least 23 other people
were injured, authorities said. Windows were blown out and bricks
tumbled down at a school and a police station nearby.
Grainy cell phone video footage posted on the
life.ru news portal
showed the moment of the second blast, with officials wandering past a
destroyed building before a loud clap rings out and smoke rises in the
distance. Television pictures later showed a few gutted cars, damaged
buildings and a 2-meter (six-foot) deep crater in the road.
Police and security services are a frequent target
because they represent
the
Kremlin — the militants' ideological enemy — but also because of
their heavy-handed tactics. Police have been accused of involvement in
many killings, kidnappings and beatings in the
North Caucasus, angering residents and
swelling the ranks of Islamic militants.
A report by the Center for Strategic and
International Studies said 916 people died in the North Caucasus in 2009
in violence related to the clashes, up from 586 in 2008. Another
monitoring group, the Caucasian Knot, reported the region suffered 172
terrorist attacks last year, killing 280 people in Chechnya, 319 in
Ingushetia and 263 in
Dagestan.
The bloodshed has continued despite Kremlin efforts
to stem it. Medvedev, who claims the militants have spread through the
North Caucasus "like a cancerous tumor," this year appointed a
deputy prime minister to
oversee the troubled region and address the
root causes of terrorism, including dire
poverty and corruption.
Monday's subway bombings, carried out by two women, were the first
terrorist attacks in
Moscow
since 2004.
The first blast struck the Lubyanka station in central Moscow, beneath
the headquarters of the Federal Security Service or FSB, the KGB's main
successor agency. The FSB is a symbol of power under Putin, a former KGB
officer who headed the agency before his election as president in 2000.
About 45 minutes later, a second blast hit the Park Kultury station on
the same subway line, which is near the renowned
Gorky Park. In both
cases, the bombs were detonated as the trains pulled into the stations
and the doors were opening.
David Mikael Taclino
Inyu Web Development and Design
Creative Writer
