SUICIDE BOMBER KILLS 9 AT MOSCOW SUBWAY STATION
By STEVEN LEE MYERS

September 1, 2004 – (NYT) A woman blew herself up outside a subway station in Moscow on Tuesday evening, killing at least 9 other people and wounding more than 50, officials said. The suicide bombing came exactly a week after bombs destroyed two passenger airliners over Russia.

A woman blew herself up outside a subway station in Moscow on Tuesday evening, killing at least 9 other people and wounding more than 50, officials said. The suicide bombing came exactly a week after bombs destroyed two passenger airliners over Russia.

The woman's bomb, packed with bolts or other bits of metal, exploded after 8 p.m. in a parking lot bustling with commuters and shoppers outside the Rizhskaya subway, two and a half miles north of the Kremlin.

Moscow's mayor, Yuri M. Luzhkov, said the bomber's target might have been the subway itself, because witnesses told investigators that the woman had approached the entrance only to turn away because two police officers were checking documents and bags. In February, a woman carrying a bomb destroyed a subway car here, killing at least 41.

"She got scared," Mr. Luzhkov said at the scene. "She turned back into the crowd and blew herself up. It was a very powerful explosion."

The attack was the latest in a series of bombings across Russia - from the heart of the capital to the ruins of Grozny - stemming from the separatist conflict in Chechnya.

On Wednesday morning, a group calling itself the Islambouli Brigades of Al Qaeda, the same group that said it was responsible for the twin air bombings last week, claimed responsibility for the blast in Moscow in a posting on an Arabic-language Web site, and it tied the attack to the Chechnya conflict.

The bombing occurred only hours after President Vladimir V. Putin declared for the first time that last week's twin air disasters, which killed 90 people, were acts of terrorism and vowed that Russia would not bow to terrorist demands. Those attacks also appear to have been carried out by female bombers.

"We have fought, and are fighting, and will continue to fight these forces," Mr. Putin said after meeting with President Jacques Chirac of France and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany in Sochi, a resort on the Black Sea.

Outside the station, situated on Prospekt Mira, Russians once again faced the grim and increasingly familiar aftermath of terrorism. The blast set two cars on fire, pocked walls and shattered windows in the circular building above the subway entrance and in a shopping center across the parking lot. An hour after the attack, wrenched bodies still lay where they fell. One young woman, inconsolable, searched the stunned crowds, shouting "Pasha!" over and over.

"Something flew past my head - I don't know what it was," said Aleksei Borodin, 29, who was walking with his mother when they felt the concussive shock of the explosion. "I saw hands and feet."

Despite an increased security effort, suicide bombings, mostly by women, have struck with deadly frequency over the last two years, unnerving Russians. The women, whom the news media here call "black widows," are said to be avenging the deaths of husbands, sons, fathers and brothers who have died in the grueling conflict in Chechnya, though in many cases little is known about the women's lives.
In Moscow alone, such bombers have struck at an outdoor music festival in July 2003, outside the National Hotel in the city's heart in December, and in the subway in February.

On Tuesday, the Federal Security Service confirmed that the investigation into last week's air disasters now focused on two women thought to be Chechens: Satsita Dzhbirkhanova and Amanat Nagayeva.
Sibir Airlines Flight 1047, a Tupolev-154 headed to Sochi, where Mr. Putin spent most of August, and Volga AviaExpress Flight 1303, a Tupolev-134 to Volgograd, crashed nearly simultaneously last Tuesday night after bombs exploded inside them, near the rear of each aircraft. According to investigators cited in Russian news reports, the women may have assembled and detonated the bombs in the rear bathrooms. Investigators found traces of an explosive, hexogen, in the wreckage of both, as well as evidence of an explosion in damage to seats and tray tables.

The women's bodies, still not positively identified, are the only ones of the victims that have not been claimed by relatives. Sergei N. Ignatchenko, the service's chief spokesman, emphasized in an interview that it was possible that the women's passports could have been stolen and used by the bombers.
In the days after the airliners crashed, officials publicly played down the possibility of terrorism. By contrast, there was little hesitation after Tuesday's bombing.

Even before it happened, evidence emerged suggesting that whoever was behind the attacks may have been plotting a series of them, including more bombings still to come.

The Federal Security Service announced that an explosion at a bus stop in Moscow on the night the airliners crashed was a terrorist act, possibly related to the airline bombings, and not hooliganism as first reported. That bomb, hanging in a plastic bag on a lamppost, wounded four people on the highway leading to Domodedovo International Airport, where the two passenger planes departed roughly two hours later.

On Friday, a Web posting from the Islambouli Brigades of Al Qaeda said its fighters had hijacked the two airliners to avenge the deaths of Muslims at the hands of Russian forces in Chechnya and elsewhere.
Russian officials say there is no evidence of a hijacking on board, and the group's statement has not been independently confirmed. In August, the group claimed to have carried out an attempt to assassinate Shaukat Aziz, then Pakistan's prime minister-designate; the attack killed eight people but left Mr. Aziz unhurt.

The bombings have occurred on either end of Sunday's presidential election in Chechnya, which has proved to be another ambiguous milestone in the war. It was held to replace Akhmad Kadyrov, who was assassinated in May when a bomb exploded under a stadium grandstand in Grozny. The Kremlin's favored candidate, Maj. Gen. Alu Alkhanov, easily won the election, but American and European officials, as well as rights groups here, criticized the vote as not meeting international standards for fairness. On Election Day in Chechnya, there were also clear signs of ballot manipulation.

Chechnyan separatist leaders like Aslan Maskhadov, in hiding or in exile, have distanced themselves from attacks on civilians. His representative abroad, Akhmed Zakayev, denounced General Alkhanov's victory as a fraud and, while denouncing terrorist attacks, said Russia's policies in Chechnya were responsible.
In Sochi, Mr. Putin said the claim of responsibility for the twin air attacks, if confirmed, would prove that the conflict spilling out of Chechnya was being fueled by international terrorist groups linked with or inspired by Al Qaeda.

"If one of the terrorist organizations has claimed responsibility for this and it is linked to Al Qaeda, that is a fact that confirms the link between certain forces operating on the territory of Chechnya and international terrorism," he said.

Mr. Putin, Mr. Chirac and Mr. Schröder, who last year were allied in opposition to the American-led war in Iraq, found themselves meeting again, this time in the shadow of terrorism.

Mr. Chirac had delayed his arrival in Sochi by a day because of the kidnapping of two French journalists in Iraq. With Mr. Putin expressing support, Mr. Chirac said France was doing everything it could to win their release. He declined to comment on the kidnappers' principal demand, that France revoke a ban on Muslim head scarves in schools.

On the street near Tuesday's blast, people expressed fear and, worse, the uncertainty of where terrorism would arise next. Tatyana Pavlova, 19, was selling books in a small canopy only 100 feet from where the bomb went off. Still stunned an hour after the attack, she described smoke and fire and the jarring scenes of the wounded rushing by her.

"It is the first time I have seen it so close," she said. "Before, we only heard it on the news. You take the Metro, and sometimes you think something could happen. We simply pray to God each time that nothing happens to you."Erin E. Arvedlund and Sophia Kishkovsky contributed reporting for this article.

Source: NYT Website (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/01/international/europe/01moscow.html?pagewanted=print&position)