A Blast in Moscow
From the April 12, 2010 issue of TIME Magazine
Two female suicide bombers struck Moscow's subway system during the Monday-morning commute, killing at least 39 people in the worst terrorist attacks to hit the city in six years. Ever since the two bombed stations were reopened later the same day, stunned Russians have wandered the damaged platforms, laying flowers and stopping to touch shrapnel gashes in the stone walls. Officials have placed blame for the attacks on Islamist rebels from regions like Dagestan, where two more suicide blasts killed at least 12 people Wednesday morning. The leading rebel warlord in those regions, Doku Umarov, who has been linked to al-Qaeda, said in a video posted on a rebel website Wednesday night that he had personally ordered the Moscow strikes, and he vowed that more would follow. Now the government faces intense pressure to renew crackdowns in its most rebellious regions, raising fears of another bloody cycle of revenge. As Prime Minister Vladimir Putin so brashly put it, "It's now a matter of honor for the security forces to scrape them out from the bottom of the sewers."