UPDATED: Suicide Bomber Attacks Moscow’s Main Airport
The bomb was packed with metal objects to cause maximum damage, according to law enforcement authorities.
Reportedly 35 are dead and 20 more critically injured.
RIA Novosti reported that two suicide bombers blew themselves up as people emerged from the international arrivals zone.
Washington Post Foreign Service
The explosion, which apparently took place near a cafe outside the international arrivals area, occurred at 4:37 p.m. local time, according to the Russian Air Transport Agency. Planes from Dusseldorf, Germany, and Odessa, Ukraine, had landed in the previous half-hour. Just before the blast, a plane from London arrived. An amateur video shot shortly after the blast showed bodies strewn about a smoke-filled hall, apparently where people wait for passengers to exit customs. The lights were on, but workers with flashlights made their way through the smoke, amid luggage and several luggage carts.
Russian President Medvedev said that preliminary information shows Moscow explosion was caused by a terror attack.
Domodedovo Airport Aerial View
Police said they believed that about 15 pounds of explosives had been used. Cell phone jamming devices were activated at the airport to try to prevent more potential bombs from being detonated.
Briton Mark Green, who was on a British Airways flight that landed at the airport before the explosion, told BBC News there were thousands of people gathered in the baggage collection area, baggage hall and queue for immigration at the time of the blast.
Officials have called a “high terror alert” at Moscow’s two other major airports and the metro system, and there is heightened security throughout the city. The explosion apparently took place near a cafe outside the international arrivals area of Russia’s biggest and busiest airport. Domodedovo is used by United, Lufthansa, Austrian Air, British Airways and the Russian airline Transaero, among others. It is also a hub for domestic travel. Interfax reported that police are seeking three men in connection with the bombing but did not provide details.
MOSCOW (AP) — A explosion ripped through the arrivals hall at Moscow’s busiest airport on Monday, killing 31 people and wounding about 130, Health Ministry officials said. The Foreign Ministry has announced that current investigations have not clarified whether Israelis are among the dead at the Moscow airport blast.
Russian news agencies, citing witnesses, said airport halls were filled with so much smoke that it was difficult to count the dead.
Moscow’s Domodedovo airport – the busiest in the Russian capital – has been rocked by an explosion that has killed at least 10 people. Dozens more are thought to have been injured in the blast, which reports suggest may have been the work of a suicide bomber.
