A threat made real

TWO bomb attacks in the southern city of Volgograd within 24 hours have killed more than 30 people, injured over 100 and brought the city once known as Stalingrad into a state of terror. The latest bomb, the third in three months, ripped through a trolley-bus in the morning rush-hour, killing at least 14 people. This came less than a day after a bomb went off at a railway station—one of the most closely guarded places in the city—killing 17 people. Both explosions appear to have been set off by suicide bombers. Although nobody has claimed responsibility, the attacks are most likely the work of Islamist fundamentalists from the North Caucasus. Coming just six weeks before Russia’s winter Olympics in Sochi, only a few hundred miles from the North Caucasus, the attacks bear out a threat made by Doku Umarov, the self-proclaimed emir of the North Caucasus...Continue reading