Moscow: With police scrambling hard to nab
the perpetrators of the twin suicide bombings on Moscow metro,
President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday sought tough anti-terror laws
to combat the menace, amid moving tributes by Russians to the
39 people killed in the worst attack in the city in six years.
"We need to focus our attention on certain aspects of
improving legislation aimed at preventing terrorist acts,"
Medvedev said in televised remarks, a day after two suspected
Chechen woman suicide bombers targeted the subway system.
He called for measures to step up the efficiency of law
enforcement agencies, increase the safety of public places and
transport systems as well as to improve the implementation of
the country`s anti-terrorism statutes.
Russian security officials hinted that the attacks could
have been plotted by militant groups linked to the
Muslim-dominated North Caucasus region, commonly referred to
as Chechnya, media reports said.
Security sources were quoted as saying that the two woman
suicide bombers boarded a metro train together at the
Yugo-Zapadnaya station. Interfax reported that they were
accompanied to the station by another two women and a man who
were photographed by CCTV.
"We have been destroying terrorists and will continue to
destroy them. In recent years have learnt how to do this,"
Medvedev said.
During a meeting with the Chair of Council on Civil and
Human Rights Ella Panfilova, Medvedev underscored that the
state policy in the Caucasus should be "reasonable and
modern."
"The main task of the federal government is to create
favourable life conditions in the Caucasus region jointly with
the local authorities," he stressed.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told the country`s security
agencies that it was a "prestige issue" for them to locate the
organisers of yesterday`s attacks.
Addressing a Cabinet meeting convened to discuss security
arrangements on the public transport system, Putin said: "We
know that in the given situation they (terrorists) are hiding
on the bottom, but it is a prestige issue for the law
enforcement agencies to pick them out in to the sunlight from
the bottom of the stinking sewer. And I am confident that this
will be done."
Putin, in his televised remarks, noted that one of the
blown carriages of metro train had CCTV camera, which could
not prevent the terror act, but was helpful in locating the
organisers.
As the country observed the `Day of Mourning` in memory
of the victims of the blasts, commuters broke their journey at
Lubyanka and Park Kultury metro stations to place flowers at
the makeshift boards, marking the area on platforms where most
of the people died yesterday in globally-condemned attacks.
A day after the blasts, there were unusually fewer
commuters in the metro during the morning rush hours, with
trains running half-empty.
Many people, who were unable to overcome their metro
phobia, came by surface transport to pay tributes to the
fellow travellers who died in the blasts. They lit candles and
placed flowers at the sites.
Last evening, shortly after the reopening of the Red
Line for thorough traffic, President Medvedev visited
Lubyanka station with Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov to pay
tributes to the victims by laying a bouquet of red flowers.
Flags flew at half mast and security in the metro network
and central streets was tightened.
Meanwhile, the toll in the twin bombings rose to 39, with
the death of a woman in hospital.
"One critically wounded woman died in Sklifosovsky
Hospital overnight," Moscow Health Chief Andrei Seltsovsky
told state-run `Rossiya 24` news channel.
In all 84 people sought medical assistance, 71 are
undergoing treatment in four Moscow clinics, out of which five
are in grave condition, he said.
The blasts in the underground railway stations revived
the nightmare Moscow had witnessed on February 6, 2004
when a suicide bombing on a moving metro train had claimed
42 lives. Same year in an August attack, 10 people were killed
outside another metro station.
PTI
