Moscow, April 03: A 17- YEAR- OLD girl has been identified as one of the two suicide bombers who carried out the blasts at Moscow’s tube stations on Monday.
Quoting police sources, leading Russian business daily Kommersant reported on Friday that Dzhennet Abdurakhmanova from Russia’s North Caucasus republic of Dagestan belonged to the ‘ Black Widows’ brigade.
‘ Black widows’ — as Russian journalists have dubbed women suicide bombers — are the preferred choice of Islamic rebels from the North Caucasus to carry out such attacks.
Abdurakhmanova hailed from Dagestan’s Khasavyurt district, on the border with Chechnya, the police said. She is believed to have travelled to Moscow by bus with the other woman suicide bomber, from Kizlyar, a town near the Chechen border.
Abdurakhmanova was married to a leading Islamic militant, Umalat Magomedov, who was killed by the Russian security forces at the end of last year.
Officials said Magomedov was an associate of Doku Umarov, the Chechen rebel leader who on Friday said he had ordered Monday’s attacks.
“ I promise you that the war will come to your streets and you will feel it in your lives, feel it on your own skin,” Umarov said in a video posted on kavkazcentre. com , a website affiliated with the rebels.
Officials at Russian law enforcement agencies refused to comment on Umarov’s claim, but the Russian security chief had earlier said the tube bombings were carried out by militants from the Caucasus.
Abdurakhmanova is believed to be the bomber who attacked the Lubyanka metro station on Monday, killing 20 people, Kommersant reported.
The first ‘ Black Widow’, a
young Chechen named Luiza Gazuyeva, killed a Russian general in Chechnya in November 2001 because she believed he was responsible for the death of her husband.
In Moscow, reports that the attacks were carried out by women fuelled speculation that they were ‘ Black Widows’ — women married or related to militants killed by Russian forces in areas such as Dagestan, Ingushetia and Chechnya.
The women are called so because they have usually lost husbands or close relatives in clashes with Russian forces and are motivated by a desire for revenge.
‘ Black Widows’ have been involved in several major attacks in the North Caucasus and in Moscow.
In the aftermath of the two women suicide bombers, Russian security forces launched a hunt for a 21- strong ‘ Black Widow’ cell trained by Umarov.
Russia’s Federal Security Service ( FSB) said the cell originally had 30 trainees, but nine have already killed themselves.
The rest are at large.
The cell — known as the martyrs’ brigade — is believed to be connected to Said Buryatsky, who was killed in a special forces’ operation in Ingushetia, a strife- torn region bordering Chechnya, earlier this month.
Investigators have not officially identified the second bomber, but one version is that she was a Chechen woman named Markha Ustarkhanova, the widow of another Caucasus militant, Kommersant reported.
“ Ustarkhanova, 20, is the widow of rebel Said- Emin Khizriyev, who was killed in October last year,” Kommersant reported.
The Moscow police have been on high alert since the attacks, beefing up roadblocks on roads leading to the city.
With inputs from Daily Mail