Moscow subway bombers may have links with Pak-Afghan militants: Lavrov

MOSCOW - Suggesting foreign involvement in Monday’s twin blasts, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said that the female suicide bombers who targeted the city’s subway system might have links with extremists based in the ungoverned tribal regions along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

When asked that if the explosions, in which at least 38 people were killed and over 60 others injured, were the handiwork of foreign elements, Lavrov said such a possibility could not be excluded.

“We all know that the Afghan-Pakistani border, in the so-called no-man’s land, the terrorist underground is very well entrenched. We know that many people there actively plot attacks, not just in Afghanistan, but also in other countries. Sometimes the trails lead to the Caucasus,” Xinhua quoted Lavrov, as saying.

Meanwhile, Russia’s FSB state security service has said that the two suicide bombers may have links to the North Caucasus, which is believed to be the center of an Islamic insurgency movement against Moscow.

Though no group has yet claimed the responsibility for the incident, the explosions do appear to have been co-ordinated.

Monday’s explosions were the deadliest witnessed in Russia in the recent past. There was a major attack on the Moscow Metro in February 2004, when at least 39 people were killed by a bomb on a packed train as it approached the Paveletskaya Metro station.

Six months later, a suicide bomber blew herself up outside a station, killing 10 people. Both attacks were blamed on Chechen rebels, who had targeted the capital on several occasions in the past.

Over the last decade Moscow has been hit by a string of deadly explosions claimed by militants from its turbulent southern region of Chechnya, but this has become less frequent in the last ew years. (ANI)