Shakhidat Baymuradova, a rifle slung on her back, fought alongside her husband in the ranks of Chechen rebels until he was killed by Russian troops in 1999.
This month, her hair tucked in a hijab or Muslim headscarf, she strapped explosives to her waist and blew herself up at a Muslim festival where pro-Moscow officials had gathered. At least 16 people were killed.
Baymuradova, 46, whose first name translates as "martyrdom" in Arabic, was the latest in a string of female suicide bombers to strike in Chechnya over the last year -- a frightening new form of rebel action in a decade-old conflict.
Women have traditionally been excluded from the fighting that has razed Chechnya, on Russia's southern fringe. Suicide attacks were almost unheard of in the first years of fighting.
But the "black widows" have become a new threat to Moscow, already shaken by almost daily losses.
Baymuradova's suicide attack on May 14 -- an assassination attempt on a top pro-Moscow official who in the end escaped unhurt -- also killed her woman accomplice.
Two days earlier, another woman was part of an attack in the region's usually peaceful north, driving a truck packed with explosives into a government complex.
"We are witnessing an escalation of the violence in Chechnya," said Salambek Maigov, a rebel envoy to Moscow.
"Seeing that Moscow's promises are empty, people are taking extreme measures. The Kremlin has finally lost control of the situation in Chechnya."
Kremlin officials dismiss the women, saying they act in isolation, bankrolled by mercenaries.
They say a March referendum, which showed overwhelming popular support for Chechnya remaining part of Russia, showed the region is on track for Moscow's peace plan which calls for elections for a regional president and assembly.
"All terrorist acts committed by kamikaze suicide bombers are organized by Arab mercenaries," Ilya Shabalkin, a spokesman for Russia's anti-terrorist operations in Chechnya, said after Baymuradova's attack. "They use this same tactic in Israel."
But Chechen rebel leaders describe the attacks as the illustration of widespread despair in the region, where they say the much-publicised vote has had little impact on real life.
"I cannot see any religious meaning behind these actions," rebel envoy Akhmad Zakayev said by telephone from London.
"They spring from a desire for revenge," he said.
Kheda Yusupova, from the village of Urus-Martan southwest of the Chechen capital Grozny, said grief made women easy prey.
"These women are motivated only by vengeance, and the rebels use this," Yusupova told reporters. "It is only revenge. All the rewards on this earth are irrelevant for a person burdened with grief."
The first major suicide attack in the region came in June 2000, early in Russia's second campaign to contain separatist fighters in the region.
Two women drove a truck crammed with explosives into a local police building -- one was Khava Barayeva, a relative of guerrilla leader Movsar Barayev who orchestrated last year's siege of a Moscow theater in which 129 people died.
Barayeva's attack was so novel that it was recorded in song by one of Chechnya's most popular artists.
The idea that women could fight for the Chechen cause did not hit home for most Russians, however, until the Moscow siege.
Several young women fighters appeared on footage aired on national television after Russian special forces ended the siege with a powerful gas before shooting the rebels.
Their faces covered by the Muslim hijab, they lolled dead in their seats. Most, said hostages who had spoken to them during the siege, had lost men folk in the war.
In a refugee camp in Ingushetia, on Chechnya's western border, another refugee, who refused to give her name, said four of her sons had been captured in Russian raids.
"I have only one son now, who is 11. He thinks only of avenging his brothers," she said. "Sometimes I would also like to blow myself up in the middle of a group of Russian soldiers. I would not be sorry for them."
Zakayev, a spokesman for Chechnya's fugitive separatist president Aslan Maskhadov, said there would be more bombings as extreme factions of Chechnya's separatist movement -- including warlord Shamil Basayev -- gained prominence.
"We have said we are ready to talk without conditions," Zakayev said. "Basayev says Chechnya can only be freed through war."
Maskhadov, in exile since Russian troops poured back into Chechnya in 1999 after three years of de facto independence, long called on the Kremlin to negotiate.
With Moscow's refusal, he now says there is no point in holding talks.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing