RUSSIAN SECURITY AUTHORITIES were warned as much as a week ago about the planned suicide bombing of Moscow’s Domodedovo airport yesterday – and were even given precise details as to where the bombing would strike, it is reported.
The RIA Novosti news agency quoted a security source as saying special services had received “information that an act of terror would be carried uot at one of the Moscow airports”.
Authorities had sought three suspects in connection with the tip-off, but the three had only travelled to Domodedovo yesterday to witness the explosion and then leave, the Daily Telegraph reports.
Russia’s president Dmitry Medvedev has asserted that the airport management should take responsibility for the security lapses that led to the explosion, from which the death toll now stands at 35.
Bloomberg quotes the president as saying: “Everybody who makes decisions there, and the management of the airport itself, should be responsible for it.”
CCTV footage of the explosion had shown, he added, “obvious violations” of security protocol.
An airport spokesman said the blast had hit an open-access area of the airport, in a ‘meet-and-greet’ area of the international arrivals hall. There were a series of metal directors used to screen temporary visitors to the airport, but these were not always working.
Eight foreigners are among those killed in yesterday’s blast, which is suspected to be the work of separatist terrorists from the North Caucasus regions.
Two of those killed are from the UK, while others killed came from Germany, the Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Others from Serbia, Slovakia, France, Italy and Nigeria were also hospitalised.
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