Airport Explosion Kills 35, Injures 152

No fewer than 35 persons were killed and 152 wounded when an explosion ripped through international arrivals hall at Moscow’s busiest airport on Monday, said officials.

The mid-afternoon explosion described as terror attack by Russian President occurred at Domodedovo Airport. It may have been caused by a suicide bomber.

President Omitry Medvedev told officials in a televised briefing that “from the preliminary information we have, it was a terror attack and ordered authorities to beef up security at Moscow’s two other commercial airports and other key transport facilities, including the sub-way system, the target of past terror attacks.

Medvedev stated that the explosion demonstrated that security regulations had been breached.

As a result of the incident, the president postponed his planned departure for the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland scheduled for Tuesday, where he was to give the opening address the next day.

Although there have been repeated attacks on the Moscow subway and on Russian trains, most blamed on Chechen militants.

The Monday bombing was the first involving a Russian airport since 2004.

Sergel Lavochkin, who was waiting in the arrivals hall for a friend to arrive from Cuba, said he saw emergency teams carrying blood-led people out of the terminal.

“I heard a loud bang, saw plastic panels falling down from the ceiling and heard people screaming. Then people started running away,” Lavochkin told Rossiya 24 television.

A British Airways passenger, Mark Green, who had arrived at the airport, told BBC television that he heard the huge explosion as he left the terminal.

“Literally, it shook you,” he said, adding “as we were putting the bags in the car a lot of alarm were going off and people started flowing out of the terminal, some of whom were covered in blood.”

According to him, one gentleman had a pair of jeans on that was ripped and his thigh from his groin to his knee was covered in blood.