Terrorism: 16 People Dead in Russian Suicide Bomb Attack

A female suicide bomber triggered a massive explosion at a train station in Volgograd, a city in Russia.  Sixteen people are dead, including the bomber and a police officer. Officials say that the death toll could rise, because at least 50 more people have been reported to be injured, including a 9 year old girl.

The head of the Investigative Committee of Russia, Vladimir Markin, said that the bomber set off the device, which used the equivalent of 10 kilograms of TNT and included shrapnel, before she passed through metal detectors. The bombing occurred at about 12:45 p.m. local time (3:45 a.m. ET).

The moment of the blast was caught on video outside the train station.

The name of the bomber has not yet been released but a grisly find has provided the evidence required to positively identify her.

A severed head found at the site of the bombing is suspected to be that of the woman who carried out the attack, making it “possible to identify her,” a Volgograd law enforcement source told the Russian news agency Interfax. Investigators have reason to believe the woman came from Russia’s Dagestan region, the source told the agency.

Azamat Suleymanov, an officer at the Interior Ministry of Dagestan, said they are fairly certain of the identity of the bomber.

“For legal reasons we cannot yet say that we are 100 percent sure, but we are almost confident that it was Oksana Aslanova, a Dagestani citizen,” he said. “We have her on file. She was a widow whose husband died in a special operation conducted by our forces. She was then married a few times more, always to terrorists.” (source)

Volgograd has a population of just over one million people and is situated on the west bank of the Volga River. The city is about 400 miles from the site of the upcoming 2014 Olympics, which will be starting in just 6 weeks.  Its proximity to the site has raised some concerns that this bombing is merely a distraction from a much larger scale terrorist event that is being planned.

Andrei Soldatov, a Russian security analyst and investigative journalist, said the attack might have been an attempt to distract authorities from keeping Sochi safe.

“There is no reason to hit Volgograd,” he told NBC News. “Now the authorities have to pay extra attention to Volgograd, they will have to split their attention.

“This tactic worked before. Prior to the Beslan school siege there were two explosions of planes and one in the Moscow metro – it was done especially to distract attention, so the terrorists could prepare the big act.” (source)

This is not the first time that the city of Volgograd, a major transportation hub on route to Moscow, has been the target of terrorism. In 2005, Volga-AviaExpress Flight 1353 exploded mid-air as the result of a suicide attack, killing all 43 people on board the plane. More recently, in October of this year, a bomb carried by another female suicide bomber exploded on a city bus, killing 5 people and injuring 17.