On the morning of September 13, 1999, a bomb went off in an eight-story apartment block in southeast Moscow. The Moscow Times counted 118 dead in that building alone; CBC News gave 119. It was one of five apartment-building attacks in two weeks, across Moscow and southern Russia, that left 293 people dead in the Moscow Times tally.
The government blamed separatists from Chechnya. Vladimir Putin used the bombings to justify a campaign against the insurgency there. CBC noted that others suggested the authorities themselves had staged the blasts as a pretext to reignite the war, and that Russian troops were ordered back into Chechnya at the end of that month.
The theatre on Dubrovka
In October 2002 Chechen fighters seized the Dubrovka theatre while the musical Nord-Ost was on stage. The BBC put the number of hostages at 912, taken by 40 militants led by Movsar Barayev, while CBC said about 850. Security forces pumped gas into the hall and then went in. All the attackers died. About 130 hostages did as well, most of them from the effects of the gas rather than gunfire.
Ten years on, the BBC’s Artem Krechetnikov wrote that questions still hung over the operation. Public health services had not been warned, ambulances arrived an hour and a half after it began, and the authorities did not admit to using gas until eight hours later. Even then they would not name it, leaving doctors guessing at treatment. In a 2010 poll, 74% of Russians said they only partly trusted, or distrusted, the official version. In December 2011 the Strasbourg human rights court ruled for 64 victims and ordered Russia to pay about a million euros in compensation, finding that the rescue had been poorly prepared.
Bombs in the metro and beyond
The early 2000s were a grim run. Two female suicide bombers killed 15 people at the Krylya rock festival at Tushino airfield on July 5, 2003, by the Moscow Times count; CBC listed 16 dead. On February 6, 2004, a bomb in a packed subway train at morning rush hour killed 41. That August, a suicide bomber blew herself up outside Rizhskaya station, killing 10, and two women took down two jets that had left Domodedovo, with 90 dead.
On March 29, 2010, two female suicide bombers struck the metro again. Forty people died. One target was Lubyanka station, next to the headquarters of the FSB. The bombers came from Dagestan, and the Caucasus Emirate group led by Doku Umarov claimed responsibility.
Less than a year later, on January 24, 2011, a suicide bomber attacked the arrivals hall of Domodedovo airport. The Moscow Times reported 37 dead. CBC said at least 36 died and around 180 were injured, and that Umarov claimed the attack about two weeks later. By CBC’s tally, attacks and bombings in the capital had cost more than 654 lives across 15 years.
Sources
- Timeline of Attacks in Moscow Since 1999 (The Moscow Times)
- Attacks in Moscow: 1996-2011 (CBC News)
- Moscow theatre siege: Questions remain unanswered (BBC News)
