moscow subway explosion

moscow subway explosion - Russian television showed an amateur video from inside the station Lubyanka of people wounded and possibly dead, sitting and lying on the floor. The train platform was full of smoke.

Out of both stations, passengers flooded, many of them crying and making frantic calls on their cell phones. The wounded were loaded into ambulances and helicopters, some with their heads wrapped in bloody bandages, as sirens sounded.

The last confirmed terrorist attack in Moscow in August 2004 when a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a subway station in the city, killing 10 people. Responsibility for that attack was claimed by Chechen rebels.

Russian police have killed several leaders of Islamic militants in the North Caucasus recently, including one last week in the region of Kabardino-Balkaria. The murder of Anzor Astemirov was mourned by taxpayers to two al-Qaida affiliated Web sites.

The killings have raised fears of retaliatory attacks by militants.

In February, rebel leader Doku Umarov Chechnya, warned in an interview on a rebel Web site affiliate "zone of military operations will extend to the territory of Russia ... the war is reaching its cities."

Umarov also said its guerrillas were responsible for the attack in November passenger train Nevsky Express that killed 26 people en route from Moscow to St. Petersburg.

Emergency Minister Sergei Shoigu said the toll was 37 dead and 102 wounded, but not give a breakdown of victims in each station.

In a televised meeting with President Dmitry Medvedev, head of the Federal Security Service, said Alexander Bortnikov fragments of bodies of the two bombers pointed to a connection of the Caucasus. He did not elaborate.

"We will continue fighting terrorism without hesitation and to the end," said Medvedev.