Russia blames Chechen rebels on Moscow blasts

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Sunday, July 06, 2003

Russia blames Chechen rebels on Moscow blasts

Chechen rebels are suspected of conducting the fatal blasts on Saturday near a popular rock festival in northwestern Moscow, Russian Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov said.

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Chechen rebels are suspected of conducting the fatal blasts on Saturday near a popular rock festival in northwestern Moscow, Russian Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov said.

A series of suicide bombing attacks roared out at the Tushino airfield in suburban Moscow during the rock concert, killing at least 16 and two female suicide bombers with many others seriously injured, said Gryzlov.

The minister blamed the terrorist attacks on Chechen rebels, saying that the blasts could be linked to the Kremlin's announcement on Friday that presidential elections would be held in Chechnya in October.

Moscow police spokesman Valery Gribakin said the two female suicide bombers tried to get into the Tushino airfield, the concert site, at two separate points but were stopped by guards.

"After realizing that they wouldn't be able to get into the festival... the terrorists blew themselves up," Gribakin said.

One of the suicide bombers has been identified as Zulikhan Suleimanovna Likhadzhiyeva, born in 1983 in the Kurchaloi districtof Chechnya, after the police found her passport, he added.

Police put minimum power of each of the two bombs at equivalent of 500 grams of TNT, and later discovered another explosive devicenear the entrance to the festival and defused it, Itar-Tass reported.

Doctors said the exact toll could not be decide so far as a large number of "human body fragments" were lying around on the explosion sites.

The one-day festival "Krylya" (Wings) is a highly popular summer event for Moscow's youth. The festival at the Tushino airfield in the northwest of Moscow was packed with a crowd of more than 20,000 spectators when the first blast went off.

Performance of the concert, which was scheduled to last 3 hours,is still going on at the moment, while spectators are withdrawing from the scene by emergency buses.

The city prosecutor's office condemned the blasts as terrorism, Interfax reported.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was immediately briefed about the incident, offered condolences to the families and friends of the victims and expressed sympathy with those injured.

Several suicide attacks have taken place recently in Russia's breakaway republic of Chechnya and its neighboring regions. Russian authorities have blamed the terrorist attacks on Chechen rebels.

In June, two suicide blasts in Chechnya killed at least 38 people. In May, two powerful explosions ripped through the Chechen administration building in Grozny, killing at least 78 people.

A total of 129 people were killed when heavily-armed Chechen terrorists seized more than 800 audience hostage in a Moscow theater last October.

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