The main suspect in a blast in a Saint Petersburg train carriage that killed 14 people and wounded 50 is a Russian citizen originally from mainly Muslim Kyrgyzstan, Kyrgyz authorities said yesterday.
The perpetrator had radical Islamist links, Russian media cited law enforcement officials as saying, raising the possibility the attack could have been inspired by the Islamic State group, which has not struck a major city in Russia before.
There has been no official confirmation or claim of responsibility. The Kyrgyz GKNB security service identified the suspect as Akbarzhon Jalilov, born in the city of Osh in 1995, but provided no other details.
Photo: EPA
The explosion on Monday in the middle of the afternoon occurred when the train was in a tunnel deep underground, amplifying the force of the blast. The carriage door was blown off and witnesses described seeing injured passengers with bloodied and blackened bodies.
State investigative authorities said fragments of the body of the suspect had been found among the dead, indicating that he was a suicide bomber.
The Russian National Anti-Terrorist Committee on Monday said an explosive device had been found at another station, hidden in a fire extinguisher, but it had been defused.
It was unclear who had placed that device and no arrests have been made.
Russia has been on alert against attacks in reprisal for its military intervention in Syria, where Moscow’s forces have been supporting troops loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against Western-backed armed groups as well as the Islamic State group.
Officials said they were treating the blast as an act of terrorism, but there was no official confirmation of any link to Muslim radicals.
Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov said it was cynical to say the bombing in Saint Petersburg was revenge for Russia’s role in Syria.
He said the attack showed that Moscow needed to press on with its fight against global terrorism.
Russian officials said they did not want to reveal the suspect’s identity, but a picture was starting to emerge of the man named by Kyrgyz authorities.
A page on social media site VKontakte, the Russian equivalent of Facebook, belonging to someone with the same name and year of birth as Jalilov, included photographs of him relaxing with friends in a bar, smoking from a hookah pipe.
A Reuters reporter visited a house in Osh, which neighbors said was the family home of Jalilov. The home, a modest, but well-maintained one-story brick building, was empty.
Neighbors said Jalilov was from a family of ethnic Uzbeks and that while they knew his parents they had not seen the young man for years.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was visiting Saint Petersburg at the time of the blast, went to the site late on Monday.
The Kremlin said it was “noteworthy” that Putin had been in the city.
It did not elaborate, but said such attacks on Russia were a challenge for every citizen, including the president.
Russian officials received a warning of a possible second attack at the same Sennaya Ploshchad metro station yesterday, but that alert was later lifted and the station reopened.
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