Hundreds of Russians, clutching carnations for the dead, marked 10 years since a string of bombing attacks destroyed several suburban apartment blocks and killed nearly 300 people across the country.
Sobbing relatives and friends of 93 victims placed flowers at a small memorial where one apartment was bombed on Sept. 9, 1999 — the second of four explosions that triggered panic across the nation and prompted the government to launch a series of military attacks on the southern province of Chechnya. However, questions of whether authorities might have been involved in the blasts linger.
“The feeling tonight is terrible,” said Viktor Zakharchik, 57, who lives in an adjacent building. “We lost many neighbors, acquaintances.”
Zakharchik was among the hundreds who gathered in the stuffy summer night for the 10th anniversary of the blasts. An honor guard placed wreaths at the memorial just after midnight, accompanied by the sounds of a tolling bell blaring from nearby speakers.
Many in attendance waved reporters away from the event, either too upset to comment or, perhaps, scared into silence by the myriad killings and disappearances linked to the blasts in years since.
The attacks between Sept. 4 and Sept. 16 obliterated an apartment block in Buynanksk, one in Volgodonsk and two in Moscow. A week later, police in the city of Ryazan said they had found explosives in an apartment block there, but federal officials said the substance was actually household sugar and the incident was a security drill.
The official investigation into the blasts ended in 2002. Several people were convicted and sentenced to life in prison, but the man authorities say masterminded the attacks — alleged Chechen crime boss Achemez Gochiyayev — remains at large.
Vladimir Putin, then Russia’s little-known new prime minister, rode to popularity on the back of the military campaign in Chechnya and was subsequently elected president.
Rights activists have accused officials of involvement in apartment blasts, pointing to the suspicious deaths of several independent investigators.
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