Russian investigators warn of further terrorist attacks

MOSCOW - Russian investigators have warned of further terrorist attacks in the country following Monday’s twin bombings on the Moscow metro, and said a squad of up to 25 trained suicide bombers is still at large.

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor to the Soviet KGB, said that the two suicide women, who blew themselves up at Lubyanka and Park Kultury metro stations may have been members of a larger group recruited and trained by Chechen rebel leader Said Buryatsky.

Special forces had killed Buryatsky earlier this month, and investigators are now examining whether the twin bombings, which 39 killed people, may have been in retaliation for his death, The Guardian reports.

Earlier in February, another Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov had issued an ominous warning saying that terror would be coming to Russia’s big cities in the near future.

“Blood will no longer be limited to our (Caucasus) cities and towns. The war is coming to their (Russian) cities,” Umarov had said.

The double bombing was the deadliest terror attack inside Russia in six years.

The first explosion ripped through a train that had stopped in the Lubyanka station just below the headquarters of FSB at 8a.m. local time, and the second came 40 minutes later in a carriage of a train on the platform at the Park Kultury metro station.

The carefully co-ordinated explosions spread panic, as the metro filled with smoke and people rushed for safety. (ANI)