A BOMB killed at least four, people and seriously injured several others in the Tulskaya metro station in Moscow last night, just five days before the Russian presidential elections. The blast is just what many in Russia and elsewhere have been predicting.
The bomb caused a fire in the metro and sources said the casualty figures are likely to be higher when a full inquiry is completed. The radio station Ekho Moskvy (Moscow Echo) said that at least five of the injured were in a serious condition.
The bomb was reported to have gone off in a train carriage at about 10.00 p.m. and to have contained about 1lb of gelignite. Hundreds of passengers made their way to safety by walking along the track in the smoke filled underground.
For months analysts have forecast terrorist acts which would lead to the cancellation of elections and the proclamation of a state of emergency.
Only yesterday afternoon, hours before the blast, a senior Russian analyst told this correspondent that a bomb on the metro could be expected at any time. The intelligence correspondent of the newspaper Nezavsimaya Gazeia told me that attempts to cancel the presidential elections would be preceded by a bomb on the Moscow underground.
Earlier this year the Boston Globe newspaper quoted senior US intelligence officials as making a similar prediction. They said that a group close to President Yeltsin, led by the chief of the presidential bodyguard and former KGB leader, Gen Alexander Korzhakov, had formed under the code name "Felix" to undermine the elections. US officials were quoted as saying the group would employ terrorist activities in Moscow in order to have the elections called off.
Another possible explanation for last night's bomb, and the one most likely to be favoured by pro Yeltsin forces, is that the act was committed by terrorists from Chechnya, the breakaway region in which up to 40,000 civilians have died since Russia sent in its troops more than a year and a half ago.
However, the Mayor of Moscow, Mr Yuri Luzhkov, who arrived on the scene of the blast, ruled out the involvement of Chechen separatists, saying. "It was an act against me and against President Yeltsin." He described the perpetrators as terrorists.
One of Mr Yeltsin's trump cards in the election campaign has been his peace efforts in Chechnya. He has gone so far as to state. "The war is over. Russia has won.
The Tulskaya metro station is situated in south central Moscow near the popular Danilovsky Market. Muscovites daily travel there to buy produce from the southern regions of the Russian Federation and the former Soviet republics. The Moscow subway serves 10 million Muscovites per day.
Tulskaya is one of the shallowest metro stops in the system, just below road level, and would give quick access and egress to terrorists.
President Yeltsin was due in Moscow late last night from his election campaign in southern Russia and was due to attend a rock concert near Red Square today to mark Russia's national independence day.
