Two women with explosives strapped to their bodies blew themselves up outside
the Krylya rock festival last week, killing at least 13 and injuring more than 50 in the first suicide bombings to rock Moscow. The authorities immediately blamed the attack on Chechen rebels; President Vladimir Putin cancelled a trip to Uzbekistan and Malaysia. One of the women detonated a belt of explosives packed with pieces of metal at the main entrance to the fenced-in Tushino airfield, where a crowd of some 40,000 were watching bands perform at the annual festival. The woman, who bought a ticket at a nearby clothes market was agitatedly pushing her way through the line when police officers screening concert-goers with a portable metal detector spotted her and tried to lead her away. "When the police approached, she detonated her bomb," said an eyewitness. However, only a third of the explosives detonated, injuring three people. The explosion ripped open the woman’s stomach, and she died shortly afterwards. Fifteen minutes after the blast, another woman detonated a similar belt near the concert’s main ticket offices about 100 metres away. The force of the blast tore the woman apart and killed 11 passers-by. No arrests had been made as no one had claimed responsibility. But officials said a passport found in the debris showed that one of the bombers was Zalikhan Elikhadzhiyeva, a 20-year-old resident of the Chechen village of Kurchaloi. Most of those killed were born in the early 1980s. One of the victims was a young child. Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov, speaking through his Moscow-based representative Salambek Maigov, denied any involvement in the attack. First Deputy Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev, however, said on Russia television that relatives of the Chechen woman whose passport was found have connections with rebels. Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov said the attack could be tied to a decree signed by Putin last week ordering the Chechen presidential election to be held October 5. The rebels oppose the vote, which is to be followed by regional parliamentary elections in a Kremlin-drafted peace plan. Khusein Isayev, head of the Chechen State Council, said he doubted that there was a link but predicted more attacks to destabilise the situation in Chechnya ahead of the vote The Kremlin did not elaborate. "The goal of this terrorist act is obvious-to sow fear, suspicion and ethnic intolerance in our society," Putin said in a statement. "We know that betrayers of their own people and murderers don’t have and can’t have a future." Initial news reports said the organisers of the attack might have fled in a white Gazel van with a Stavropol licence plate, but the police later denied it. Gryzlov ordered security boosted at hospitals, theatres and shopping centres, and that guards armed with metal detectors would be present at all mass gatherings, including concerts along with sniffer dogs. He praised the police for preventing the bombers from getting into the festival venue. Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, together with Gryzlov and Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu, visited the scene of the attack. Moscow saw its first suicide bombers in October 2002, when a group of Chechens, including women wearing belts with explosives, took 800 people hostage at the Dubrovka theatre. Special forces used gas to knock out the rebels before they were able to detonate their explosives.

The Chechen women who have carried out a wave of suicide bombings against Russian targets in recent months represent a disturbing new trend for a government that claims to have won the hearts and minds of the people in the breakaway southern Caucasus republic.

The latest was the fourth by Chechen women bombers on Russian targets since May. Experts said their emergence was an ominous break with the patriarchal Chechen tradition.

Russian officials say the onslaught has been modelled on the tactics of Arab terrorist groups who have taken control of the Chechen rebels’ war of independence.

But Chechen women speak of desperation driving them into the conflict. Whatever the reason, the appearance of women suicide bombers is a chilling development that has put Moscow on the defensive.

"They are not tactics previously used by the Chechens," said Russia’s prosecutor-general, Vladimir Ustinov, last month after a Chechen woman shrieked "Allahu Akbar" (God is great) before detonating herself under a bus and killing 17 Russian military personnel bound for Chechnya.

A suicide squad, which included a woman, had blown up a government complex in northern Chechnya on May 12, killing 59 people and injuring 250. Three days before carrying out the attack, the woman had said she was seeking revenge for her dead husband and sons, who had been killed by Russian troops.

Days later, two female "martyrs" with explosives strapped around their waists tried in vain to assassinate Moscow’s appointed leader in Chechnya, Akhmad Kadyrov. Fifteen people were killed.

The first such incident occurred three years ago, when a Chechen woman drove a truck packed with explosives into a Russian military compound near Grozny, the devastated Chechen capital. She killed 17 soldiers.

Few tried to follow her example, however, until at least 19 women clad in black, led by a group of male commandos, took 800 people hostage in a theatre in Moscow last October. Before storming the building, Russian troops pumped gas inside. About 129 hostages died in the operation. All the rebels were shot.