Moscow airport explosion – live updates
• At least 35 people killed and more than 130 injured in suicide bombing at Russia's biggest airport, state-run TV reports
• Click here for a summary of what we know so far
• Read more: Domodedovo airport hit by deadly bombing
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• Click here for a summary of what we know so far
• Read more: Domodedovo airport hit by deadly bombing
• Turn off auto-refresh to watch video
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Interfax is reporting that Russian investigators have found a head that is presumed to have belonged to the suicide bomber. The Guardian cannot confirm this.
Dan Milmo sends the following on British Airways flight 874:
Flight BA 874 to Domodedovo, due to arrive at 7.35pm Moscow time (4.35pm GMT), was halfway to Moscow when the blast occurred and returned to Heathrow. BA said it was reviewing whether the third daily flight, BA880, taking off at 9.55pm from Heathrow, will go ahead.
The Associated Press has more from Vladimir Markin, the spokesman for the investigative committee looking into the explosion. Markin said a suicide bomber most likely carried out the attack, and said experts were now trying to identify the suspected bomber.
There seems to be some discrepancy over the number of dead. Yelena Galanova, a spokeswoman for Domodedovo airport, has said 35 people were killed. But the Emergencies Ministry said 31 people were killed, 51 hospitalised with injuries and 94 given medical treatment.
Some Russian media reports say the bomb was packed with shrapnel, screws and ball bearings, according to the Associated Press.
AP has more eyewitness reports:Car rental agent Alexei Spiridonov, 25, was at his desk when the blast struck about 100 yards away.The agency has just filed this line: "Russian investigators say suicide bomber most likely carried out attack on Moscow airport."
"The explosion was so strong that it threw me against the wall," he told the Associated Press outside the airport. "People were panicking, rushing out of the hall or looking for their relatives. There were people just lying in blood."
Yelena Zatserkovnaya, a Lufthansa official, said she was a similar distance away. "There was lots of blood, severed legs flying around."
Airport workers were using baggage trolleys to cart out the injured, she said.
My colleague Dan Milmo has been speaking to Norman Shanks, an industry consultant and former head of security at airport group BAA. Shanks says increased observation of passengers is the only sensible solution to the new threat – even though airports in Istanbul and Addis Ababa have screened all visitors before they enter terminals.
"It is not practical to check everyone coming into the airport meet-and-greet area," he says, adding added that profiling only identifies a threat rather than neutralising it. "The danger is that once that person is spotted they could trigger the device, when there probably will be lots of people still around them." There are pictures of the aftermath of the attack here. Warning: these images are very graphic.
Barack Obama has condemned the "outrageous act of terrorism against the Russian people". His spokesman, Robert Gibbs, said the United States was ready to extend any assistance to Moscow that it required in connection with the airport attack.
Here is an updated map explaining exactly where the attack took place.
Graphic: location of the bomb at Domodedovo airport Photograph: Graphic Interfax is reporting that two foreigners were injured as a result of
the explosion. Both are now in hospital. No details yet on their nationalities. Both have been hospitalised, the agency says.
the explosion. Both are now in hospital. No details yet on their nationalities. Both have been hospitalised, the agency says.
Sorry for the confusion about whether the blast took place in departures or arrivals. It was arrivals. My colleagues in the graphics department are preparing another map now.
Despite the attack the airport seems to have remained open, my colleague Jonathan Haynes reports. Here is the departures board.
Medical staff help a victim of the explosion. Photograph: Reuters Luke Harding, the Guardian's Moscow correspondent, has just sent me this about a warning Russia's security agencies received before today's blast, according to news agencies. Luke writes:
Russia's security agencies received a warning ahead of today's blast of a possible attack on a Moscow airport, news agencies reported this afternoon.
"We received information that in one of Moscow's airports a terrorist attack could possibly take place," a law enforcement source told RIA Novosti. The source said police had been searching for three suspects. The three apparently managed to penetrate the territory
surrounding the airport, with the suicide operation possibly carried out by one of them. The other two monitored the explosion and then left, the official suggested. The suicide bomber appears to have got into the building unchallenged, taken the lift up to the second floor and then blown himself up in the general access area of the international arrivals zone, he added.
Russian opposition bloggers immediately demanded to know why security measures had not been enhanced at airports in response to the tip-off. Oleg Kozlovsky, an opposition activist, tweeted: "If the FSB [Russian's domestic anti-terrorism agency] knew about the warning a week ago, why didn't they check passengers arriving at airports?"
Another source told the Interfax: "According to intelligence, three men may have been involved in organizing the explosion, men who have been living in the region of the [Russian] capital for some time. They have been put on the wanted list." He said the three men were believed to be militants from Russia's North Caucasus. They allegedly had connections to two women, one of whom blew herself up at a range practice club in Moscow on 31 December and the other was arrested in Volgograd, Russia, later.
"It can't be ruled out that one of the three blew himself up at Domodedovo," the source said.
A team of investigators today began sifting through video footage from security cameras at Domodedovo airport and requested a list of mobile phone users in this area. CCTV cameras are installed both inside the airport and in the surrounding area.
My colleague Dan Milmo sends this from Philip Baum, the editor of Aviation Security International, who said the attack had confirmed the worst fears of industry experts.
The aviation security community has been talking for years about the threat of of suicide bombers detonating themselves at airports so it is no surprise that this has happened.
Medical staff with injured people at Domodedovo airport after today's bomb. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images Another eyewitness report, this one from Jeremy Spencer, a businessman who was in the immigration hall when the explosion went off.
He told BBC News there was a "loud bang and then the ceiling and the floor shook where we were standing". Dust started to appear from the ceiling. People immediately grabbed their telephones to see what had happened. I didn't realise it was quite so major. It was only getting out of the airport we found out what had happened.
The Reuters news agency has another eyewitness report, this one from Yekaterina Alexandrova, a translator who was waiting in the crowded arrivals area to meet a client flying in from abroad. She said:
The explosion was right near me, I was not hit but I felt the shockwave; people were falling. Smoke started to gather – there was a lot of smoke. Many of the injured went outside on their own in a state of shock. Then they began to announce information about where to exit.Reuters also reports on video footage of dozens of people lying on the floor in the airport as smoke fills the hall and a fire burns along one wall. Airport staff were shown using torches to pick their way through the chaotic scene taped off immediately after the blast.
Vladimir Putin, the prime minister and former president, has staked his political reputation on quelling the rebellion in the North Caucasus, the news agency reports.
He launched a war in late 1999 in Chechnya to topple a secessionist government. That campaign achieved its immediate aim and helped him to the presidency months later, but since then insurgency has spread to neighbouring Ingushetia and Dagestan.
"It does not ... bode well for Russian ties to the North Caucasus and is yet another sign that what Putin started in 1999 by invading the rebellious republic of Chechnya has come home to roost again in the Russian capital," said Glen Howard, president of the US Jamestown Foundation research institution.
"The bomb blast at Domodedevo will further strengthen the view among the Russian elite that Putin is losing control over security in the capital, which plays into the hands of his enemies."
Analysts say rebels are planning to increase violence in the run up to 2012 presidential elections, that may well see Putin returning to the presidency. Security has been beefed up at Moscow's other two airports, which will also receive diverted passengers who were flying towards Domodedovo, media reported.
Here is a summary of what we know so far:
• At least 35 people have been killed and more than 130 injured in an apparent suicide bombing at Russia's biggest airport, Domodedovo. Sources say three men are suspected of the attack. • Experts are blaming the attack on Islamist militants from Russia's North Caucasus, who have vowed to attack the Russian heartland.
• British Airways and BMI are attempting to gather information about passengers who landed at the airport on two planes from London before the bomb went off. There is no evidence of British casualties at this point.
• Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, has confirmed the "preliminary theory" that this was a terrorist attack, and said security will be stepped up at transport hubs and the perpetrators tracked down and punished. He has postponed a trip to Davos.
Update: Thirty-five people have been killed, according to a spokeswoman for the airport.
Photograph: David W Cerny/Reuters William Hague (left), the foreign secretary, has put out a statement about the attack:
I am deeply shocked and saddened at today's explosion at Moscow's Domodedovo airport with the loss of many lives. On behalf of the UK I send condolences to all those who have lost relatives or been injured.
British officials are in urgent contact with the Russian authorities to establish the facts and to provide consular support to any British nationals who may have been affected.
Matthew Clement, a Russia analyst at IHS Global Insight, says the attack is "almost certainly the work of Islamist militants operating out of Russia's North Caucasus region". Clement says militants in the area have increased the "tempo and scale" of their attacks over the past three years, operating under the loose banner of the North Caucasus Emirate, a jihadist group calling for the creation of an Islamic caliphate across the North Caucasus. Clement goes on:
Although the majority of attacks undertaken by the insurgents are aimed against the security forces and government officials in the North Caucasus itself (in particular the republics of Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia and Kabardino-Balkaria), attacks have increasingly been aimed at high-profile targets across Russia, as illustrated by the March 2010 double suicide attack on the Moscow metro system.
Domodedovo airport would represent an appealing target for such militants, as it is Russia's busiest airport, serves international passengers and has a high density of potential civilian targets. Its security was breached in 2004 when suicide bombers bribed their way through security checks to board two passenger planes which they subsequently brought down with the loss of 90 passengers.
My colleague Luke Harding reports that Russia's air transport agency, Rosaviatsia, said the last plane that landed at Domodedovo airport just before the explosion was from London. The explosion occurred at 4.37pm Moscow time (1.37pm GMT).
Dan Milmo, the Guardian's transport correspondent, has been in touch with BA. BA flight 872 from London to Moscow landed at 3.46pm Moscow time (12.46pm GMT) with 165 people on board. It took off again with all crew and pilots accounted for at 4.49pm Moscow time and is on its way back to London now. BA said it is trying to find out whether all the passengers are safe.Meanwhile BMI flight BD891 landed around 4.33pm (1.33pm GMT), with 97 passengers and six crew. This was just before the explosion took place. A spokeswoman for BMI said: "All crew have been accounted for but the airline is waiting for more information on the passengers from authorities in Moscow."
As Luke Harding reports, an airport official said to Interfax that these passengers would not have been caught up in the explosion. "The plane's passengers, of course, would not have been able to get into the airport within two minutes."
Two other planes that landed shortly before the explosion flew in from Dusseldorf at 3.52pm Moscow time and from Odessa at 4.07pm, Luke reports. He adds:
"An explosion occurred at Domodedovo; the preliminary theory is that it is a terrorist attack, there are both deaths and injuries," Medvedev said, speaking from his official home in Gorki, outside Moscow.
Ronarid in the comments says he/she travels to Russia regularly and was in Domodedovo airport on Friday.
It was packed, about 60% of the busiest i have seen it (in summer). Security is the same as UK airports, though anyone can walk into arrivals just as at Heathrow.
"From the preliminary information we have, it was a terror attack," Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, has told officials in a televised briefing.
The Associated Press news agency has more eyewitness reports. Sergei Lavochkin, who was waiting in the arrivals hall for a friend to arrive from Cuba, said he saw emergency teams carrying bloodied people out of the terminal.
I heard a loud bang, saw plastic panels falling down from the ceiling and heard people screaming. Then people started running away.
This video shows medical staff wheeling patients through the airport.
Warning: video contains graphic images.
A number of videos are coming in from the airport. As Luke Harding reports, this one shows the airport building full of smoke, with a body lying face down next to an airport trolley. The footage then shows a collection of dead bodies in a heap. Several people are milling around but there is little evidence of a rescue operation.
My colleagues Luke Harding, the Guardian's Moscow correspondent, and Tom Parfitt, reporting from Moscow, have sent me this:
Sources said that three men are suspected of plotting the explosion. The blast had the power of seven kilograms of TNT, the source added.
The attack is the most deadly in Russia since last March when two female suicide bombers from Russia's volatile Muslim-majority Dagestan region set off explosives in the metro, killing 40 people. It was Moscow's worst attack for six years.
The airport is the largest and most modern in Moscow, and is used by numerous international carriers including British Airways and BMI, which flies four times daily between London and Moscow. It is connected to the centre of the Russian capital by a high-speed express train and is the airport of choice for Moscow's large expatriate population.
Eyewitnesses said there is heavy smoke over the airport and the entry from the arrivals zone has been closed. "There is the smell of smoke at that section. No announcements have been made yet through loudspeakers," passengers reported via Twitter. Other Twitter users citing emergency staff at the scene said up to 70 people may have been killed.
Investigators said they believed the explosion was caused by a suicide bomber. "The preliminary reports suggest that the explosive device was activated at the international arrivals section by a suicide bomber," one source said. Several international planes were diverted to Sheremetyevo airport, with the airport temporarily closed to incoming planes.
Today's attack on Moscow's busiest airport is likely to be blamed on Islamist radicals, and is another grim sign that terror has returned to the Russian capital. The Kremlin has repeatedly insisted the situation in Russia's violent North Caucasus has stabilised, following two brutal federal wars against Chechen rebels in 1994-1996 and 1999-2005.
Today's airport bombing on an obvious target – following last year's attack on the metro – suggests this claim is a fairy-tale.
In reality, the Russian state is fighting a worsening insurgency all across its mountainous southern frontier, waged by a group of determined and well-organised Islamist insurgents. Their aim is to establish a pan-Islamic caliphate. The republics of Ingushetia, Chechnya, and Dagestan – where the insurgents operate – are gripped by civil war, with daily attacks on police and local security forces.
The Kremlin has responded to this threat to its integrity with characteristic brutality. It has launched a series of special operations. Last year its special forces killed Said Buryatsky – a top rebel and Russian-born Islamist convert – in a village in Ingushetia.
Another insurgent leader – Egyptian-born Saif Islam – was killed in Dagestan. These killings may have prompted the two women to set off to Moscow last spring on a revenge suicide mission.
In 2008 Doku Umarov, Chechnya's most senior surviving rebel leader, promised to take his violent campaign to Russia's towns and cities. He indicated he had reconstituted the suicide brigades used to devastating effect during the second Chechen war – which saw the bombing of the Moscow metro in 2004, as well as the hijacking of a Moscow theatre and the siege of Beslan, a school in south Ossetia in which 300 people, mainly children, died. It appears that the rebels have again demonstrated a capacity to strike deep into the heart of the Russian state.
The Reuters news agency is reporting that Russia's rouble-dominated stock market MICEX (.MCX) fell by nearly 2% following the blast, which took place at 1.32pm GMT.
Reuters reports:Smoke wafted out of the baggage hall and people were seen running out of the emergency exits at the airport, local media reported. The investigative committee of the prosecutor's office said the bomb had been classified as a terrorist attack – the first of its kind in the Russian heartland this year.Reuters links the blast to Islamist rebels in Russia's mainly Muslim North Caucasus, who were planning to increase their campaign in the Russian heartland this year as the country prepares for presidential elections in 2012.
The Kremlin is struggling to contain an Islamist insurgency in the North Caucasus, and rebels have repeatedly vowed they will take their battle to the Russian heartland.
Security has been beefed up at Moscow's other two airports, which will also receive diverted passengers who were flying towards Domodedovo, media reported.
The Associated Press is reporting that the explosion tore through the international arrivals hall at Domodedovo airport in Moscow.
AP reports: "The state RIA Novosti news agency, citing sources in law enforcement, said the explosion at Domodedovo Airport may have been caused by a suicide bomber."The news agency says Moscow police have been put on high alert and have beefed up their patrols on the city's underground train system, a previous target for terrorists.
Mark Green, a British Airways passenger who had just arrived at the airport, told BBC television he heard the huge explosion as he was leaving the terminal:Literally, it shook you. As we were putting the bags in the car a lot of alarms ... were going off and people started flowing out of the terminal, some of whom were covered in blood. One gentleman had a pair of jeans on that was ripped and his thigh from his groin to his knee was covered in blood.He said thousands of people were in the terminal at the time of the blast.
AP provides some context about the Domodedovo airport, which is regarded as Moscow's most up to date hub, but its security procedures have been called into question:
In 2004, two suicide bombers were able to board planes at Domodedovo by buying tickets illegally from airport personnel. The bombers blew themselves up in mid-air, killing all 90 people aboard the two flights.Dmitry Medvedev is delaying his planned trip to Davos because of the bombing, BBC News is reporting.
Built in 1964, Domodedovo is located 26 miles (42 km) southeast of the centre of Moscow and is the largest of the three major airports that serve the Russian capital, serving over 22 million people last year.
Terrorists have targeted other transport centres in Moscow.
In more recent suicide bombings, twin blasts on the underground last March killed 39 people and wounded more than 60 people.
In December 2009, Chechen rebels claimed responsibility for blowing up a high-speed train between Moscow
BMI airline operates two flights daily into Domodedovo airport. A spokeswoman said flight BD891 landed at 4.30pm local time with 97 passengers on board.
She said all the passengers had disembarked before the incident happened.
She said all the passengers had disembarked before the incident happened.
All the BMI crew are accounted for. We are waiting for information about whether the passengers were caught up in the incident from the authorities in Moscow.
The Foreign Office is "urgently investigating" whether any British nationals may have been caught in the Russian airport bombing; there are no reports of any British people being affected at the moment.
A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: We've seen reports of an explosion at Domodedovo airport in Moscow and are urgently investigating. Consular staff including the consul general are on their way to the airport. We are making contact with the Russian authorities to see exactly what has happened. We are also making contact with the British airlines using Domodedovo. There are no reports yet of injured British nationals.
Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, has vowed to track down and punish those behind the attack, which took place at Russia's biggest airport.
Writing on Twitter, Medvedev said:Security will be strengthened at large transport hubs. We mourn the victims of the terrorist attack at Domodedovo airport. The organisers will be tracked down and punished.
At least 31 people have been killed and scores injured in a suspected suicide bomb blast at Moscow's Domodedovo airport today, according to reports.
The Russian state news agency said around 130 people have been injured in the explosion.Smoke was seen billowing out of the baggage claim area with people running out of the emergency exits at the airport, local media reported.
A traveller, identified as Viktor, told the Russkaya Sluzhba Novostei radio station:
There was an explosion, a bang. Then I saw a policeman covered in fragments of flesh and all bloody. He was shouting: "I've survived! I've survived!"We will bring you more here as soon as we get it.
