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Authorities identify teen as Moscow subway bomber

02 April 2010 19:48 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Russian investigators on Friday identified one of the female suicide bombers in the Moscow metro attacks that killed dozens of people as teenager Dzhennet Abdullayeva, APA reports quoting CNN.
The committee’s press office told CNN that Abdullayeva was the suicide bomber at the Park Kultury metro station on Monday. She was born in 1992, the office said, but could give no further details as to her age.
The investigators established her identity "after a series of forensic and genetic examinations as well as identification procedures," the committee said.
It said the identity of the second female bomber is under investigation.
A number of Russian newspapers reported Friday that Abdullayeva -- whose last name has also been cited as Abdurakhmanova -- was the widow of a prominent Dagestani rebel militant leader who was killed by federal forces in late December.
Monday’s blasts tore through the Lubyanka and Park Kultury stations in central Moscow -- the female bombers detonating their explosives about 40 minutes apart, beginning just before 8 a.m. (midnight ET).
An estimated 500,000 people were riding trains in the capital at the time of the attacks.
The death toll, which had stood at 39, apparently rose to 40 when a 51-year old man died Friday morning in a Moscow hospital, according to Russian state television.
An apparent photograph of Abdullayeva and her late husband, identified as 30-year-old Umalat Magomedov, was distributed by Newsteam, and published in Russian media, including the Kommersant newspaper.
The photograph shows a bearded man with his arm draped over a young-looking teenage girl dressed in traditional Muslim attire. Both are holding guns and looking unsmilingly into the camera. It is not immediately clear why the two do not share the same last name.
The circumstances of the photograph, including when it was taken, were not explained. CNN could not confirm the authenticity of the picture.
The Russian Investigative Committee said Abdullayeva was from Dagestan, a predominantly Muslim republic in southern Russia that has faced separatist violence for years. On Wednesday, two bombs exploded there, killing a dozen people, most of them police officers. Later in the day, a car -- possibly carrying a homemade explosive device -- exploded, killing two men and wounding one more, Russian state-run news agency Itar-Tass reported.
The next day, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev arrived in Dagestan, where he planned to hold a meeting about the situation with the heads of republics in the North Caucasus, territorial units of Russia’s Federal Security Service, and the Interior Ministry, the Interfax news agency reported.
Ahead of the president’s visit, Chechen rebel leader Dokku Umarov claimed that he gave orders to attack the Moscow subway, according to a Chechen rebel Web site.
Chechen rebel leader in attack claim
Kavkaz Center, a Web site that regularly carries messages from the rebels, released a video in which Umarov said he was behind Monday’s attacks.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said he doesn’t rule out the double bombings in Dagestan were carried out by the same terrorist groups behind Monday’s suicide attacks in Moscow.