Woman blows herself up in Moscow, killing five

MOSCOW -- A suicide bomber who may have intended to attack Russia's parliament blew herself up outside a nearby upscale hotel across from Red Square on Tuesday, killing five people and sparking fears of a new wave of terror attacks in the Russian capital.

The bombing, which also wounded at least 12 people, came on the heels of Sunday's nationwide elections for parliament's lower house and only days after a woman blew herself up on a train in southern Russia, killing 44 people.

Police were searching for a second woman suspected of involvement in Tuesday's attack, warning that she might also be carrying explosives. No group claimed responsibility, but past attacks -- including ones carried out by female suicide bombers -- have been blamed on rebels from the breakaway republic of Chechnya.

The midmorning explosion outside the National Hotel, shortly before President Vladimir Putin addressed a meeting at the Kremlin nearby, left the Russian capital on edge. People in Moscow were already jittery after a suicide attack in July and a Chechen rebel hostage-taking raid on a Moscow theater last year. This year alone, nearly 300 people have been killed in Russia in bombings and other attacks blamed on Chechens.

Two women, possibly the suicide bomber and her accomplice, appeared lost near Red Square before the blast and asked a passer-by for directions.

The National Hotel sits on a corner diagonally across from a gate leading into Red Square and the Kremlin. The State Duma, which officials said appeared to be the intended target, is located across the street, one of the capital's most elegant shopping boulevards.

"Evidently, the bomb went off by accident," Luzhkov said, according to the Interfax news agency. "The National Hotel was not the place where the suicide bombers had planned to stage the explosion."

Security cameras near the hotel picked up footage of the suicide bomber, a woman dressed in a light-colored coat and carrying a purse, Luzhkov said on Russia's NTV television.

He said the purse was rigged with explosives and that she also was wearing an explosive belt, which the Interfax news agency reported was packed tightly with metal balls. The bomb contained more than two pounds of TNT, Moscow police spokesman Yevgeny Gildeyev said.

The blast shattered a Mercedes sedan parked nearby and smashed out windows on the upscale hotel, leaving white curtains billowing in the wind. Bodies and body parts were strewn about, including a head and a headless female body.

Twelve people were wounded, five of them in grave condition, said Lyubov Zhomova, the spokeswoman for the Moscow medical directorate. A Chinese national was among the injured.

Dozens of police cordoned off the blast site with red-and-white tape and pushed reporters and other bystanders away. The entrance to the normally crowded Okhotny Ryad metro station, around the corner from the blast, was closed.

Police sent in a mechanical robot and sappers used a water cannon to destroy two suspicious objects.

"We saw the bodies lying around," said a Norwegian journalist, Amund Myklebust, who had been just inside the National Hotel's doors when he heard the blast. "Everybody was shocked."

Security was immediately tightened around the State Duma. Repeated attacks -- including Friday's train bombing -- have exposed the inability of Russian authorities to protect the public against suicide bombings, a technique that Chechen rebels have turned to in the most recent conflict over the breakaway republic but hadn't used in the past.

The blast at the hotel came after Sunday's parliament elections, which handed a major victory to Putin's allies, strengthening his grip on the country.

In the Kremlin, Putin later referred to terror threats in his address to regional leaders commemorating the 10th anniversary of the nation's constitution, which will be celebrated Friday.

"(The constitution) is a foundation for the development of a free market economy, democracy, and the development of the nation as a whole and the preservation of its territorial integrity. The actions of criminals, terrorists, which we have to confront even today, are aimed against all that," Putin said.

Later Tuesday, police evacuated the Kiev railway station after finding what they called a suspicious looking object under a train that travels between Moscow and the Moldovan capital, Chisinau -- adding to gridlock in the capital and raising anxiety levels even further.

A suicide truck-bomb attack last December destroyed the headquarters of Chechnya's Moscow-backed government and killed 72 people, and another killed 60 at a government compound in the region in May. Later that month, a woman blew herself up at a religious ceremony, killing at least 18 people.

In June, a female suicide attacker detonated a bomb near a bus carrying soldiers and civilians to a military airfield in Mozdok, a major staging point for Russian troops in Chechnya, killing at least 16 people.

A double suicide bombing at a Moscow rock concert in July killed the female attackers and 15 other people, and an explosive device a woman brought into downtown Moscow less than a week later killed an expert who tried to defuse it.

Russian forces have been bogged down in Chechnya since 1999, when they returned following rebel raids on a neighboring Russian region. Earlier, they fought an unsuccessful 1994-96 war against separatists that ended in de facto independence for the region.