Monday, January 24, 2011

Blast kills 35 at Moscow's busiest airport

Blast kills 35 at Moscow's busiest airport

Rescuers carry away a man wounded in a blast at Domodedovo Airport in Moscow on Monday, Jan. 24, 2011. The explosion ripped through the international arrivals hall at the airport, the city's busiest, killing 31 people and wounding 130 others, officials said. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called the bombing a terror attack. (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev)

MOSCOW (AP) — An explosion ripped through the international arrivals hall at Moscow's Domodedovo Airport on Monday, killing 35 people and wounding about 130, officials said. The Russian president called it a terror attack.

Airport spokeswoman Yelena Galanova announced the death toll on Russia's NTV television.

The state RIA Novosti news agency, citing law enforcement sources, said the midafternoon explosion at the airport, the largest of the city's three commercial airfields, may have been caused by a suicide bomber.

Amateur video posted on YouTube showed the terminal engulfed by smoke, with a pile of bodies in one section and other bodies scattered around the floor. Luggage lay strewn across the ground, and there were several small fires. A dazed man in a suit pushed a baggage cart through the carnage.

"From the preliminary information we have, it was a terror attack," President Dmitry Medvedev told officials in a televised briefing.

He ordered authorities to beef up security at Moscow's two other commercial airports and other key transport facilities, including the subway system, the target of past terror attacks. He said the explosion demonstrated that security regulations had been breached.

Mr. Medvedev postponed his planned Tuesday departure for the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he was to give the opening address on Wednesday.

Although there have been repeated attacks on the Moscow subway and Russian trains — most blamed on Chechen militants — the bombing Monday was the first involving a Russian airport since 2004.

Sergei Lavochkin, who was waiting in the arrivals hall for a friend to arrive from Cuba, said he saw emergency teams carrying bloodied people out of the terminal.

"I heard a loud bang, saw plastic panels falling down from the ceiling and heard people screaming. Then people started running away," Mr. Lavochkin told Rossiya 24 television.

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1 comment:

Chris Taus said...

More security is now going to be required at Airports so that only travelling people can go to the check in desks... in many countries they screen all your bags before you can even go into the airport building to get to check in. Its scary to think that a suicide bomber can just go to any airport and blow themselves up like that!!!

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