Moscow airport blast kills 29

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Deadly explosion at Moscow airport

An explosion ripped through the international arrivals hall at Moscow's busiest airport on Monday, killing at least 31 people and wounding about 130, officials said. The Russian president called it a terror attack.

MOSCOW - An explosion at an unsecured section of Domodedovo Airport, on the southeast outskirts of Moscow, killed 29 people in a waiting area for arriving passengers Monday afternoon, in what appears to be a terrorist attack.

At least 50 people were hospitalized, authorities said, and 35 were listed in critical condition.

Officials have called a "high terror alert" at Moscow's two other major airports and the metro system, where two suicide bombers killed 40 people in March. There is heightened security throughout the city.

Interfax reported that police are seeking three men in connection with the bombing but did not provide details. The Associated Press reported that a suicide bomber was responsible.

The blast detonated in a hall where arriving international passengers emerge from customs. Large crowds had gathered to await passengers as they departed the baggage area, police sources told the Interfax news agency. As at most airports, the area is outside the secure zone.

"Therefore, the bomb did not fly to Moscow by plane, it was brought in to the airport from outside," Interfax quoted the sources.

The explosion occurred at 4:37 p.m. local time, according to the Russian Air Transport Agency. Planes from Dusseldorf, Germany, and Odessa, Ukraine, had landed in the previous half-hour. Just before the blast, a plane from London had arrived.

An amateur video shot shortly after the blast showed bodies strewn about a smoke-filled hall. The lights were on, but workers with flashlights made their way through the smoke, amid luggage and several luggage carts.

Yelena Bakhtina, who works in a cafe at the other end of the hall, said on Russian television that she was about 100 yards from where the explosion took place when there was a sudden loud boom. She said the whole building shook, raining plaster down around her.

Sergei Lavochkin told Russian television's Channel One that he was at the airport waiting for a friend who was flying in from Cuba. "I was not that close to the place of the explosion, but I heard a strong noise and people's cries," he said, adding, "I saw people running away in panic. ... I saw two men sitting on the bench, their heads bleeding, and I saw men being carried on the luggage trolleys to the ambulances."

Another witness, Alexei Nefedov, told Russian television: "I saw a lot of smoke, a lot of police and a lot of firemen." He said passengers still in the customs area, which is behind a solid wall, were unhurt and continued to collect their luggage as it came off the carousels. As they began to emerge into the aftermath of the explosion, he said, they found a scene of destruction and death.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev postponed his trip to the Davos World Economic Forum in Switzerland, where he had been scheduled to arrive Tuesday. He appeared on Russian television in the late afternoon and expressed his condolences to the relatives of those killed, promising a full investigation of the bombing.

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