Police: Moscow bomb attack kills 5
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The blast happened outside the National Hotel.
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MOSCOW, Russia (AP) -- A bomb exploded outside the National Hotel across from Moscow's Red Square on Tuesday, killing five people, wounding at least nine and sparking fears of a new wave of suicide bombing attempts in the heart of the Russian capital.
The ITAR-Tass news agency reported that the explosion had been caused by a female suicide bomber, and that an undetonated explosive had been found on the bomber's body.
Police were searching for a thin woman dressed in a dark fur coat who was suspected of involvement in the attack, said Moscow police spokesman Yevgeny Gildeyev. He could not confirm that the blast had been caused by a suicide bomber.
Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov told the Interfax news agency that there was at least one and possibly two female bombers and that they had asked a passer-by the way to the lower house of parliament, the State Duma.
"Evidently, the bomb went off by accident," he told Interfax. "The National Hotel was not the place where the suicide bombers had planned to stage the explosion."
Moscow police were cautious about calling the blast a terrorist act, saying initially that it could have been caused by a commercial dispute. However, as investigators continued to probe the site, they, too, thought that the explosion was a politically motivated terrorist act, Gildeyev said. The Federal Security Service and prosecutors were also treating the bombing as terrorism.
The attack occurred shortly before Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed regional leaders at a Kremlin meeting to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the nation's constitution, which will be celebrated Friday.
"(The constitution) is a foundation for the development of a free market economy, democracy, and the development of the nation as a whole and the preservation of its territorial integrity. The actions of criminals, terrorists, which we have to confront even today, are aimed against all that," Putin said.
The blast occurred near a Mercedes sedan that was parked on the sidewalk. Interfax reported that a headless female body was lying nearby, along with a black briefcase that authorities thought might contain more explosives. It later said, citing a law enforcement source, that identification papers for a woman named Inga Gizoyeva -- an Islamic-sounding name -- had been found on one of the dead bodies, and that they indicated she had been born in Chechnya.
The force of the blast was equal to 5 kilograms (11 pounds) of TNT, ITAR-Tass reported.
A robot inspected the blast site and shortly afterward two explosions could be heard from across the street. They appeared to have been set off by a water cannon, and Gildeyev said that all undetonated explosives at the site had been destroyed by early afternoon.
Five people were killed, and 12 were hospitalized, five of them in grave condition, said Lyubov Zhomova, the spokeswoman for the Moscow medical directorate. Kirill Mizulin, another police spokesman, said a Chinese national was among the injured. Interfax identified the Chinese as Lu Yuan, 23. ITAR-Tass reported that medical workers on the site said most of the victims appeared to be passers-by.
The blast occurred outside the National Hotel, which sits on a corner across a square from a gate leading into Red Square and the Kremlin. The State Duma is located nearby, across the capital's most elegant shopping street. Elections to the Duma took place Sunday, and Russian authorities had warned that terrorists might try to disrupt the balloting.
Television pictures showed the Mercedes, its windows blown out and its door ajar, as white curtains billowed in the hotel's shattered windows. Beside the car was what appeared to be a body lying on the ground, obstructed by a Christmas tree.
Dozens of police cordoned off the blast site with red tape and pushed reporters and other bystanders away. Three ambulances and three fire engines were at the scene. The entrance to the normally crowded Okhotny Ryad metro station, located around the corner from the blast, was closed.
A Norwegian journalist, Amund Miklebust, said he had been just inside the National Hotel's doors when he heard the blast shortly before 11 a.m. (0800 GMT).
"We saw bodies lying around," he said. "Everybody was shocked."
Asked if he, too, was in shock, Miklebust replied, "Well, when you're in Moscow you always have this thing at the back of your head that you're not 100 percent safe here."
Police evacuated the Kiev railway station in Moscow on Tuesday afternoon after finding what they described as a suspicious looking object beneath a train that travels between Moscow and the Moldovan capital, Chisinau.
Russians have been jittery about terrorist acts following a yearslong series of explosions in Moscow and southern Russia blamed on Chechen rebels.
Forty-four people were killed when a suicide bomber attacked a train in southern Russia last week. (Full story)
Altogether, close to 300 people have been killed in Russia in bombings and other attacks blamed on Chechens over the past year.
The deadly bombings -- and a Chechen rebel hostage-taking raid on a Moscow theater in October 2002 -- have exposed the inability of Russian authorities to protect against suicide attacks.
A double suicide bombing at a Moscow rock concert in July killed the female attackers and 15 other people, and an explosive device a woman brought into downtown Moscow less than a week later killed an expert who tried to defuse it.
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