Moscow: A young Russian woman wanted by
the police for planning a New Year`s Eve attack in Moscow blew
herself up in a deadly suicide bombing in the country`s
restless North Caucasus, investigators said on Wednesday.
Three people died and 27 others were wounded in a
double suicide bombing outside police posts late yesterday in
the mountain village of Gubden in the violence-torn region of
Dagestan.
Investigators today identified the first bomber as
Marina Khorosheva -- a woman who has been repeatedly linked to
a failed plan for a major suicide attack by Islamist militants
in Moscow on December 31.
"According to preliminary information, a study of the
body fragments showed that one of the terrorist-bomber was
visually identified as Marina Khorosheva," the investigative
committee said in a statement.
The December 31 plot failed when the suicide bomber
accidentally set off her charge inside her guest house in
Moscow. But it was then followed by a January 24 attack at
Domodedovo airport that killed 36 people.
Khorosheva and her husband Vitaly Razdobudko -- also
wanted by the police -- had aroused intense media interest as
they are ethnic Russian Orthodox Christians who converted to
Islam and became part of the militant underworld.
Razdobudko had been dubbed in the press as the
"Russian Wahhabi" because of his embrace of extreme Sunni
Islam.
News agencies said that initial evidence suggested
that Razdobudko could have been the driver involved in the
second bombing in Gubden.
"For now, this is nothing more than speculation
because the suicide bomber`s body was blown to bits," Interfax
quoted one local police source as saying.
"We have sent the DNA samples to a Stavropol lab (in
southern Russia), where it will be carefully analysed," said
the official.
PTI
