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Moscow survivor: 'We were blown some distance'

By Ivan Watson, CNN
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Bomb survivors reveal brushes with death
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
  • A man and wife waiting for his work partner are injured
  • Just meters away the work partner and another man escape unscathed
  • On Wednesday, he visited them in hospital carrying flowers and cognac
  • Now he speaks with the guilt of a man who, through chance, survived unhurt

Moscow (CNN) -- A wounded survivor lay in a hospital bed parked in the middle of a busy hallway, a day after the Moscow airport bombing.

There weren't enough rooms for all the patients sent to the hospital in central Moscow. So Sergei Zezin's mother anxiously watched over her son in the corridor, as he slowly began to recover from emergency surgery.

"They said there were no rooms left because of the crisis situation," Zezin said. "They promised to move me to my own room later."

Zezin showed off his injuries -- bandages on his shoulder and stomach and a long cast with a patch of blood on it covering his leg.

"I had shrapnel wounds here and here," Zezin said. "The doctors showed me the shrapnel [when they took it out]. They were pieces of steel wire."

Zezin was waiting with his wife to pick up a co-worker from Austria in the arrivals hall of Domodyedovo airport on Monday afternoon, when the bomb exploded, hurling deadly pieces of metal through a crowd of bystanders.

"There was a deafening bang and we fell down," he recalled. "Actually I think we were blown some distance and knocked unconscious."

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Russian media executive Sergei Lavrov had just picked up his luggage from the baggage carousel when the bomb detonated on the other side of the wall that separated the arrivals hall from the baggage claim. "There was a very big explosion. Booosh! Very very loud," he said.

Lavrov survived the blast -- which Russian officials say killed 35 people and injured up to 180 -- without a scratch. But for the next 20 minutes, he said, arriving passengers were trapped in their section of the airport as smoke billowed in from the explosion, because the emergency exits were locked shut.

"It was impossible to go out," he said. "Do you think it's possible in Rome or in America that the emergency exits would be closed?"

Shaken by the experience, Lavrov was only able to sleep last night after a dose of the most traditional of Russian remedies: "I just took 50 grams of vodka," he said, with a laugh.

Austrian businessman Johan Hammerer knew from the moment he heard the blast that it was a bomb.

He was also in the baggage arrival area of the terminal when the bomb detonated -- and he also survived unscathed.

But he didn't realize how serious the damage was until after he caught a glimpse of Russian security personnel pushing victims through the terminal on baggage trolleys.

"Then I saw red blood from people in the snow outside the airport. And I couldn't think clearly," Hammerer recalled.

Hammerer spent terrifying minutes walking among the wounded, frantically calling on his phone, until he finally found the man who had planned to meet him at the airport.

It was Sergei Zezin, Hammerer's Russian business partner -- and he was bleeding.

"He said to me, 'I am injured and my wife is inside and she is terribly injured,'" Hammerer said.

On Tuesday, Hammerer stood next to Zezin's hospital bed, in the hallway of Moscow City Hospital Number 1.

He had brought a bouquet of flowers and a bottle of Hennessy for his business partner. When Zezin's mother began crying at one point, a woman walking past chastised her saying: "You need to have a happier face when you're in a hospital."

Zezin is likely to make a full recovery. His wife Natalya is in the intensive care unit with much more serious injuries to her legs.

Hammerer now speaks with the guilt of a man who, through chance, survived a brutal act of violence, while his friends suffered serious injury.

"Maybe if I took another passport line and was a little quicker, then maybe I would be there five minutes earlier and we would have gotten away," he said.

"They were waiting for me," Hammerer sighed, after visiting his friend's hospital bed in the hallway. "They wanted to pick me up."