MOSCOW – Russia said on Saturday that this week’s horrific attack on a Moscow airport was staged by a suicide bomber from the North Caucasus who tried to kill as many foreigners as he could.
But officials stressed that they could not reveal the 20-year-old man’s name or the republic he came from because they were still on the hunt for the perpetrators of the horrific attack.
“We have established the identity of the terrorist suicide bomber who set off the explosive,” the Investigative Committee said in a statement. “He turned out to be a 20-year-old native from one of the North Caucasus republics.”
Monday’s attack on the country’s busiest airport shook Russia’s confidence just as it was gearing up to present a modern new face to a flood of foreign visitors who are expected here for the 2014 Winter Olympics and 2018 World Cup.
And investigators said they thought it was no accident that the bomb went off only moments after several European flights landed in the Russian capital. “I would especially like to note that it was by no means an accident that the act of terror was committed in the international arrivals hall,” Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said in the statement.
“According to investigators, the act of terror was first and foremost aimed against foreign citizens.” The Domodedovo international arrivals hall bomb killed eight foreigners – including two Austrians and one man each from Britain and Germany.
The second attack on Moscow in less than a year claimed the lives of 35 people in all and prompted President Dmitry Medvedev to sack several transport security officials.
