Print

Mail

wiki links

Blood-soaked concertgoers in state of disbelief

Thousands of Moscow kids went out to a rock concert Saturday and were instead treated to a spectacle of blood and horror, after two female suicide bombers set off deadly blasts that brought the war in Chechnya too close to home.

One rescue worker sat with blood on his left hand, smoking a cigarette with his other, in grief and disbelief.

"There was a blast and then my ears began to hurt," he said. He did not seem to remember when the blasts -- up to three, according to witnesses -- went off.

Much of this bustling city was closed off to traffic while an emergency helicopter landed on a highway outside the entrance to a concert that was being staged on an airstrip -- an annual event similar to summer festivals staged in Britain and the US.

Some 40,000 people were already in attendance before the first blasts went off.

At least 16 people have died including the two bombers and over 20 are seriously injured, mostly with shrapnel wounds from the blasts, which have been branded another attack by Chech-en separatists.

Many music fans at the festival came away in shock.

"At first we heard an explosion but did not understand what it was," said Alexander, 29.

"We thought it might have been a firework. The second blast was much stronger."

Then, Alexander said, mayhem ensued.

"People began running toward the metro station," he said. "But we did not understand that this was terrorist act. We only understood this after being told so by the police."

Around 10 mutilated bodies were lying on the sidewalk as medics rushed through the wreckage.

One body was covered in a plastic sheet. Witnesses said it was a young woman severely injured in the blast that medics could not save.

But the concert did not stop immediately after the blasts.

Some 200 rescue buses rushed to the scene of the concert, which was due to feature 20 of Russia's biggest rock bands.

But witnesses said that officials were scared to shut down the concert, fearing that panic would set off a stampede.

The rattled survivors did not seem to understand what struck.

"All I saw was a cloud of smoke," a young concert-goer, who gave her name only as Maria, said.

"Everybody thought it was a firework ... and then I saw a girl lying there, dead," one young man told state-run Rossiya television.

Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, one of the first officials to arrive at the scene, gave more brutal details.

He said the suicide belt on the first woman did not go off right away.

Luzhkov said that it initially injured three people, while some of the explosive remained unexploded on the woman's body. She has been identified as a Chechen.

A second woman, wearing a suicide belt packed with around one kilogram of TNT, caused more carnage, killing at least 15 people and injuring dozens more.
This story has been viewed 1240 times.