Suicide bomber kills 35 at Russia’s biggest airport

MOSCOW, (Reuters) – A suicide bomber killed at least  35 people at Russia’s busiest airport today, state TV said,  in an attack on the capital that bore the hallmarks of militants  fighting for an Islamist state in the North Caucasus region.
President Dmitry Medvedev vowed to track down and punish  those behind the bombing, which also injured over 150 people,  including foreigners, during the busy late afternoon at Moscow’s  Domodedovo airport.
Islamist rebels have vowed to take their bombing campaign  from the North Caucasus to the Russian heartland in the year  before presidential elections, hitting transport and economic  targets. They have also levelled threats at the 2014 Winter  Olympics, scheduled for the Black Sea resort town of Sochi, a  region some militants consider “occupied”.
Dense smoke filled Domodedovo’s international arrivals hall  and a fire burned along one wall.
“Taxi drivers lined up in the arrivals hall were blown up.  Pieces of their bodies covered us and my left ear doesn’t hear  very well at all,” Artyom Zhilenkov, 30, told Reuters as he  pointed to pieces of human flesh on his coat.
Thick drops of blood were scattered across the snow-covered  tarmac outside the arrivals hall, where Interfax news agency  said traces of shrapnel were found.
“I heard a loud boom… we thought someone had just dropped  something. But then I saw casualties being carried away,” a  check-in attendant who gave her name as Elena told Reuters at  Domodedovo, which is some 22 km (14 miles) southeast of Moscow.
The prosecutor’s office said the bomb had been  classified as a terrorist attack — the largest since twin  suicide bombings on the Moscow metro rocked the Russian  heartland in March.
“The blast was most likely carried out by a suicide bomber”
State television said the blast was the work of a  “smertnik”, or suicide bomber.
U.S. President Barack Obama condemned the “outrageous act of  terrorism” and offered Moscow help. NATO Secretary General  Anders Fogh Rasmussen said he was shocked, state TV said.
A decade after federal forces drove separatists from power  in Chechnya in the second of two wars, the mainly Muslim North  Caucasus is wracked by violence.
Medvedev, who has called the Islamist insurgency in the  North Caucasus the biggest threat to Russian security, wrote on  Twitter: “Security will be strengthened at large transport  hubs.”
“We mourn the victims of the terrorist attack at Domodedovo  airport. The organisers will be tracked down and punished.”
Medvedev, due to open the World Economic Forum on Wednesday,  delayed his Tuesday departure to the Swiss city of Davos.
No group has yet taken responsibility for the attack, but  dozens of Internet surfers, writing in Russian, praised the  suicide bomber on unofficial Islamist site kavkazcenter.com.
Russia’s rouble-denominated stock market MICEX fell by  nearly two percent following the blast, but traders said they  expected little long-term impact.