VOLGOGRAD, Russia (Reuters) — A bomb
ripped apart a bus in Volgograd on Monday, killing 14 people in the
second deadly attack blamed on suicide bombers in the southern Russian
city in 24 hours and raising fears of Islamist attacks on the Winter
Olympics.
President Vladimir Putin, who has staked his prestige on
February's Sochi Games and dismissed threats from Chechen and other
Islamist militants in the nearby North Caucasus, ordered tighter
security nationwide after the morning rush-hour blast.
Investigators said they believed a male suicide bomber set off the
blast, a day after a similar attack killed at least 17 in the main
rail station of a city that serves as a gateway to the southern
wedge of Russian territory bounded by the Black and Caspian Seas and
the Caucasus mountains.
A Reuters journalist saw the blue and white trolleybus — a bus
powered by overhead electric cables — reduced to a twisted, gutted
carcass, its roof blown off and bodies and debris strewn across the
street. Windows in nearby apartments were blown out by the
explosion, which investigators called a "terrorist act".
"For the second day, we are dying. It's a nightmare," a woman near
the scene said, her voice trembling as she choked back tears. "What
are we supposed to do, just walk now?"
The bomb used was packed with "identical" shrapnel to that in the
rail station, indicating they may have been made in the same place
and supporting suspicions the bombings were linked, said Vladimir
Markin, a spokesman for the investigators.
Health Ministry spokesman Oleg Salagai said 14 people were killed
and 28 wounded in the bombing on Monday.
"There was smoke and people were lying in the street," said Olga,
who works nearby. "The driver was thrown a long way. She was alive
and moaning ... Her hands and clothes were bloody,"
There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
On Sunday, investigators initially described the station bomber as a
woman from Dagestan, a hub of Islamist militancy on the Caspian, but
they later said the attacker may have been a man. In October, a
woman from the North Caucasus blew up and killed seven people on a
bus in Volgograd.
The city has held a place in Russians' sense of national identity
since, when known as Stalingrad, its Soviet defenders held off
German invaders to turn the course of World War Two.
Chechens and other North Caucasus militants have also staged attacks
in Moscow and other cities in the past.
SECURITY
Putin, who has not spoken publicly since the attacks, ordered a
federal committee that coordinates counterterrorism efforts to step
up security nationwide including in Volgograd, and to report to him
daily, the Kremlin said.
The violence raises fears of a concerted campaign before the
Olympics, which start on February 7 around Sochi, a resort on the
Black Sea, 700 km (450 miles) southwest of Volgograd.
In an online video posted in July, the Chechen leader of insurgents
who want to carve an Islamic state out of the swathe of mainly
Muslim provinces south of Volgograd, urged militants to use "maximum
force" to prevent the Games from going ahead.
"Terrorists in Volgograd aim to terrorize others around the world,
making them stay away from the Sochi Olympics," said Dmitry Trenin,
an analyst with the Moscow Carnegie Centre.
The International Olympic Committee expressed condolences to those
affected by the attacks and said "we have no doubt that the Russian
authorities will be up to the task" of providing security at the
Games.
"Unfortunately, terrorism is a global phenomenon and no region is
exempt, which is why security at the Games is a top priority for the
IOC," a spokeswoman for the International Olympic Committee in
Lausanne, Switzerland.
In power since 2000, Putin secured the Games for Russia and has
staked his reputation on a safe and successful Olympics, even
freeing jailed opponents including oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky
and the Pussy Riot punk band to remove a cause for international
criticism at the event.
Putin was first elected after winning popularity for a war against
Chechen rebels, but attacks by Islamist militants whose insurgency
is rooted in that war have clouded his 14 years in power and now
confront him with his biggest security challenge.
Police said additional officers were being deployed to railway
stations and airports nationwide after the bombing at the Volgograd
rail station on Sunday, but the attacks raised questions about the
effectiveness of security measures.
The police force in Volgograd, a city of a million people on the
west bank of the river Volga, has been depleted as some 600 officers
were redeployed to Sochi to tighten security around Olympic sites, a
police officer told Reuters.
More attacks can be expected before the Olympics and cities in
southern Russia where the Games are not being held are easier
targets than Sochi, said Alexei Filatov, a prominent former member
of Russia's elite anti-terrorism force, Alfa.
"The threat is greatest now because it is when terrorists can make
the biggest impression," he said. "The security measures were beefed
up long ago around Sochi, so terrorists will strike instead in these
nearby cities like Volgograd."
TENSIONS
The attacks also threatened to fuel ethnic tension, which has
increased with an influx of migrant laborers from the impoverished
Caucasus and Muslim Central Asian nations to cities around Russia,
including Volgograd, in recent years.
"They need to be chased out of here. It has become a transit
junction — there are all these non-Russians, both good and bad,"
said Olga, a saleswoman at a store near the mangled bus. "We've
plenty bandits of our own. Why do we need others?"
Police were checking documents of people in Volgograd, with a focus
on migrants, said Russian news agency Itar-Tass.
Volgograd will be one of the venues for the 2018 soccer World Cup,
another high-profile sports event Putin has helped Russia win the
right to stage, and which will bring thousands of foreign fans to
cities around Russia.
The first Olympics in Russia since the 1980 summer Games in Moscow,
Sochi is a chance for Putin to show how the country has changed
since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
He has faced criticism in the West and from Russian activists who
say he has smothered dissent and encouraged discrimination against
homosexuals since starting a third term as president in 2012.
Sunday's attack was the deadliest to strike the ethnic Russian
heartlands since January 2011, when a male suicide bomber from the
North Caucasus killed 37 people in the arrivals hall of a busy
Moscow airport.
(Additional reporting by Alissa de Carbonnel;
writing by Steve Gutterman; editing by John Stonestreet, Will Waterman and Alastair
Macdonald)
President Vladimir Putin, who has staked his prestige on
February's Sochi Games and dismissed threats from Chechen and other
Islamist militants in the nearby North Caucasus, ordered tighter
security nationwide after the morning rush-hour blast.
